any smooth-tongued stranger who comes in for dinner. The stage and
the colored supplements have spread this impression of the farmer, and
the farmer has not cared. He felt he could stand it! Perhaps the
women on the farm feel it more than the men, for women are more
sensitive about such things. "Poor girl!" say the kind friends. "She
went West and married a farmer"--and forthwith a picture of the
farmer's wife rises up before their eyes; the poor, faded woman, in a
rusty black luster skirt sagging in the back and puckering in the
seams; coat that belonged to a suit in other days; a black sailor hat,
gray with years and dust, with a sad cluster of faded violets, and torn
tulle trimming, sitting crooked on her head; hair the color of last
year's grass, and teeth gone in front.

There is no reason for the belief that farmers' wives as a class look
and dress like this, only that people love to generalize; to fit cases
to their theory, they love to find ministers' sons wild; mothers-in-law
disagreeable; women who believe in suffrage neglecting their children,
and farmers' wives shabby, discouraged and sad.

I do not believe that farmers' wives are a down-trodden class of women.
They have their troubles like other people. It rains in threshing
time, and the threshers' visit is prolonged until long after their
welcome has been worn to a frazzle! Father won't dress up even when
company is coming. Father also has a mania for buying land instead of
building a new house; and sometimes works the driving horse. Cows
break out of pastures; hawks get the chickens; hens lay away;
clothes-lines break.

They have their troubles, but there are compensations. Their houses
may be small, but there is plenty of room outside; they may not have
much spending money, but the rent is always paid; they are saved from
the many disagreeable things that are incident to city life, and they
have great opportunity for developing their resources.

When the city woman wants a shelf put up she 'phones to the City
Relief, and gets a man to do it for her; the farmer's wife hunts up the
hammer and a soap box and puts up her own shelf, and gains the
independence of character which only come from achievement. Similarly
the children of the country neighborhoods have had to make their own
fun, which they do with great enthusiasm, for, under any circumstances,
children will play. The city children pay for their amusement. They
pay their nickel, and