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10
CHAT.
I have just come from the streets of Atlanta, where
I mingled with the busy Christmas shoppers—among
them mothers and big sisters, accompanied by happy
little men and women, eagerly taking in the beauties
and marvels of the show windows. The Christmas
shopping rush has begun. It will increase every day
until Christmas Eve, when you will see belated buy
ers rushing about and popping in and out of the
shops in the desperate hurry that characterizes the
dilatory virgins who neglect to provide oil for the
lamps until the door is about to be shut. The wise
virgins have been all along filling the Christmas
lamp leisurely and with good judgment, buying
pretty things when they were to be seen and exam
ined; also remnants of silk, ribbon, etc., for pieces of
dainty handiwork. Men are poor Christmas shoppers
usually, and yet many of them buy the best and most
useful things. Umbrellas are a favorite purchase,
and always they get good ones, for they act on the
wise proverb, “The best is the cheapest” in the long
run. The male members of society, particularly the
family man w r ho has to foot the bills, is apt to vote
Christmas present-making a costly nuisance, but the
gift-making feature of Christmas is uplifting—it lifts
us out of self and causes us to think of others. If
buying of gifts has necessitated some personal sacri
fice, it is all the more beneficial. Every exercise of
self-denial helps to build up a strong character. I
know mothers who encourage their children to work
and. save all the year through with an eye to making
or buying gifts for Christmas. The little ones have
each a box for Christmas money. The parents are
comparatively poor, but they encourage gift-making
on principal, always impressing the children with the
truth that should underlie the offering of all pres
ents —that it is not the value of these which is im
porant; it is the spirit in which they are given; and
the judgment used in selecting what is pretty or use
ful and appropriate. Simple gifts are always better
and should be the rule among friends. In this way
gift-making will not be the burden it now is in too
many instances.
Always a good present is a book or a box of nice
paper -with envelopes and stamps. Mr. F. L. Orton,
of New York, -who is well known to all our Sunny
South friends and to The Golden Age as well, asks
me in a private letter if stamp-books and a subscrip
tion to a magazine or good weekly paper would be a
suitable present to some of the shut-ins of our House
hold. Indeed, any one of them would prize such a
gift. Nearly all of our shut-ins love to write, while
to receive letters is the chief ojy of their narrowed
lives. “Send me a letter just to say you remember
me,” was the last message of poor Ben Knight, one
of our most pathetic shut-ins, who died this year.
Ben alawys said he would die before Tom Lockhart
passed away, though Tom was an ossified man, un
able to move a limb, and confined to a mattress for
twenty-three years. “But Tom has an educated
brain,” said Ben, “and he can use it. He has a
movable thumb and finger and he writes and earns
his living, while I, with my drawn-up hands and legs,
have just to sit and think.” Ben —poor fellow! —was
not a little envious of his brother sufferers ability to
think and work and keep cheerful. Those who care
to remember our shut-ins with a Christmas letter
will recall that Tom Lockhart’s address is Welling
ton, Missouri; that sweet little Mattie Beveridge, for
whom the Sunny South Household built a church,
lives among the piney hills at Dabney, Arkansas.
She has a little book of her life to sell. Annie
Ueavey, who writes such good letters for the Houses
hold, lives at Peavey, Alabama, and always has some
elaborate pieces of needlework on hand to sell at
very reasonable prices. Mary Ellen Willis, of Burnes
ville, Ga., has a prettily bound illustrated book to sell,
containing the story of her life, and interesting
sketches and poems, with an introduction by Mr. Will
Upshaw. The most needy of all the shut-ins is the
unfortunate Parrish family, living at Nashville, Ga.
Austin Parrish and his sister are nearly helpless in
valids, and their young brother is completely ossi
fied —helpless as a block of marble—and also blind.
Hearing is his only way of keeping in touch with the
world. So our . good Sunny South Household gave
him a graphophone, which was a source of infinite
THE HOUSEHOLD
A Department of "Expression 'For Those Who Teel and Think.
The Golden Age for December 10, 1908.
pleasure to the hapless boy. When Christmas letters
are being written by those who like to give happiness
to others, do not forget that Margaret Richard —our
sweet “Maid Margaret”—is practically shut in, and
that she has written some most appropriate gift
books, among them the “Three Bells” and “Darkey
Ways in Dixie,” both illustrated and entertaining,
while her genius has sounded a deeper note in her
last book, the beautiful poem-novel, “Virginia
Vaughn,” which the Badger Publishing House in Bos,
ton brought out in a lovely gray and gold volume.
She lives, as you all know, at Newberry, South Caro
lina. Mr. Orton, who visited her in his recent flying
trip through the South, says: “She fulfilled all my
mental visions of her personality. She is as ideal as
her own ‘Virginia Vaughn’. ”
We have some entertaining letters today—several
from new members. I hope all our friends will let
us know what they are doing and thinking of and
what they are reading these winter evenings. What
has become of our Julia Coman Tait? Many inquiries
about her come to me. Wry has she not continued
her deeply interesting reviews of new books? I hope
she will reply to Tessa Roddy. Also I hope we shall
soon hear from Ellys, S. Y. P., May McMillan and
others. Apropos of new books, I have received two
that I will tell you about next week. They are both
by members of the Household.
■ Wlitb Our Correspondents
IS IT A FAKE?
I want to know something about spiritualism, or
spiritism is the approvel name for it, I think. A
girl came to our little town from Louisville, Ken
tucky, who had created a sensation by her ability
to move chairs and tables by just touching them
with one finger; also, she could read one’s charac
ter and tell what he w T as thinking about and where
a little pin cushion or other small object was hid
den, although these might be concealed in the most
improbable places. She declared that there were
many “earth-bound spirits,” who never left this
world after death. Dead Indians, she said, are nearly
all earth bound; and it was six or seven Cherokee
Inldians who had entered Lula Hurst, the Georgia
stiong girl, anl enabled her to perform such wonder
ful feats. She said that spiritism had been admitted
as true by all enlightened people. Is this so?
I have had, for five years, a haunting desire to com
municate with one from the Spirit world —the one in
particular being my cousin—a young and lovely girl,
who, being motherless and her training neglected by
her busy father (an ambitious lawyer and politician)
ran away with an inferior man employed on her
father’s place. She died two years later, having
never been forgiven by her father. I went to the
town in which she died, and brought back her re
mains, to be interred in our home burial grounds, by
the side of her mother. She loved me as if I had
been her own brother, and her last words, as rpeatel
to me by the kind woman who nursed her, were,
Send for Cousin Jed. I must see him; I must see
him; I have something to tell him.” I have always
believed that she wished to tell me she had a little
baby, and where it was that I might take charge of
it. Her husband had deserted her, and being pen
niless, she may have let some one have the baby
to take care of, while she worked in a shirt factory
for its support and her own. I advertised and made
many inquiries, but could never hear anything con
cerning the baby. If I could only get a communica
tion from this dear, unfortunate kinswoman, it would
lift a weight from my mind.
JED WALLIS.
Chattanooga, Tenn.
FARMERS’ WIVES.
Much has been said and written about the pleas
ures of country life, but after an experience of nearly
half a century, I am firm in the conviction that fewer
pleasures fall to the lot of the wife of the average
farmer than those of any other avocation in life.
She is. in nine cases out of ten, cook, milkmaid,
washerwoman, laundress, seamstress, and maid of
all work to her family, which is nearly always a large
one. She begins by doing all of her own work, so
that it will help “John” to get a start, and is posi
tively enthusiastic over the prospect of the good time
coming, when they will be able to rest and enjoy
life “‘under their own vine and figtree.” Her heart
throbs with pride in anticipation of being the mis
tress of a nice home, and she cheerfully denies herself
all but the plainest and cheapest clothes, while she
adroitly changes her old garments into smaller ones
for the little people, and her attempts at millinery
would be laughable, were they not so pathetic, as she
tries to evolve some sort of headgear for her nu
merous offspring, for it is terribly inconvenient to
have more boys than hats in the family, and the
shoes have to be bought, as that is one thing she can
not make at home.
She invariably takes in sewing, thankful of the
chance to “help John,” and will let her own work
wait while she runs the sewing machine, sometimes
far into the night, making dresses tor the “sister in
black,” who can hardly be hired to do work at any
price, but can, somehow, wear better clothes than
the farmer’s wife does. The money derived in this
way is sure to be spent for some needed piece of
wearing apparel, which is doubly appreciated be
cause she earned it.
In the arduous task of caring for her first little
ones she comforts herself with the reflection that the
older ones will in a few years be large enough to
help with the younger, but as time goes on, and they
must be sent to school, and the boys, and not infre
quently, the girls, too, are pressed into service in
the fields; and as John increases his farm, more
hired help is required, and his already overworked
spouse cooks the food for for “Cuffy,” while “Mrs.
Cuffy” is taking life easy.
She has also to contend with the white hireling,
which is, to most women, a greater nuisance than the
black, for be does not take at all kindly to the wood
pile, put is possessed with the pointer dog propensi
ty for monopolizing the fire, while he, in most cases,
has fewer claims to respectability than the afore
said canine.
When she at last moves into a larger and better
house, the care of it is but an added load to an over
burdened and often nearly wornout woman, and the
joy she once anticipated, somehow does not mater
ialize, for her large and growing family only in
crease her responsibilities, and her children have
never known anything else but for mother to be al
ways busy, and as for John, he is usually a good
citizen, sometimes a good church member, and once
in a while, a good man (but his name Is not Legion),
I will state by the way of parenthesis—for his ever
lasting conflict with the negro and the mule in
his strenuous efforts to obtain a livelihood, has no
tendency to soften his nature, and in many cases,
after he is amply able to hire help, he does not do
it. He has become so accustomed to seeing his wife
do all the work that he gives the matter precious
little thought apparently.
The majority of farmers’ wives seldom go to
church, owing sometimes to the distance, but, often
er, to the fact that dinner must be prepared, and
she stays at home to do it, while her husband and
children usually go. At rare intervals, she spends
the day with a relative or a neighbor, or makes a trip
to town to do the family shopping.
There is no rest nor recreation and few things
happen to break the monotony of her existence.
Among farming folk, generally, there are no amuse
ments, except for the children and young people, but
they have picnics in summer and parties in winter,
while protracted meetings are greatly enjoyed by
them, too.
Many women of thirty-five or forty are much older
looking than their city sisters of nearly twice that
age; there is so little of interest in their lives, while
hard work bows the frame, and suffering leaves deep
lines in the face, which nearly always wears a pa
tient, tired look.
If I have said anything in this article which re
flects on “John,” I most humbly ask his forgiveness,
for I think that he is generally a decent enough sort
of person, but he is so in the habit of letting his wife
kill herself at work that he does not notice it.
I am willing to put myself on record as saying
that the lives of most farmer’s wives are a joyless,
plodding existence, and that it is due more to unin
tentional neglect on the husband’s part than anything
else.
Poems without number have been written about
the beauties of nature, but when a woman has to
milk the cows, feed the chickens, cook supper for a
