Woman on the American Frontier: A Valuable and Authentic History of the Heroism, Adventures, Privations, Captivities, Trials, and Noble Lives and Deaths of the "Pioneer Mothers of the Republic"Fowler, William Worthington
History
Woman on the American Frontier: A Valuable and Authentic History of the Heroism, Adventures, Privations, Captivities, Trials, and Noble Lives and Deaths of the "Pioneer Mothers of the Republic"
Fowler, William Worthington
Frontier and pioneer life -- United States; Women -- United States -- Biography
We should, however, remember that there is another large class of women
who, for various reasons, have left comfortable homes in older communities,
and risked their happiness and all that they have in enterprises of pioneer
life in the far West. What wonder that they should sadly miss the thousand
old familiar means and appliances! Some utensil or implement necessary to
their husbandry is wanting or has been lost or broken, and cannot be
replaced. Some comfort or luxury to which she has been used from childhood
is lacking, and cannot be furnished. The multifarious materials upon which
household art can employ itself are reduced to the few absolute essentials.
These difficulties are felt more by the woman than the man. To quote the
words of a writer who was herself a pioneer housewife in the West:
"The husband goes to his work with the same axe or hoe which fitted his
hand in his old woods and fields; he tills the same soil or perhaps a far
richer and more hopeful one; he gazes on the same book of nature which he
has read from his infancy and sees only a fresher and more glowing page,
and he returns home with the sun, strong in heart and full of
self-congratulation on the favorable change in his lot. Perhaps he finds
the home bird drooping and disconsolate. She has found a thousand
difficulties which her rougher mate can scarcely be taught to feel as
evils. She has been looking in vain for any of the cherished features of
her old fireside. What cares he if the time-honored cupboard is meagerly
represented by a few oak boards lying on pegs called shelves. His tea
equipage shines as it was wont, the biscuits can hardly stay on the
brightly glistening plates. His bread never was better baked. What does he
want with the great old-fashioned rocking chair? When he is tired he goes
to bed, for he is never tired till bed-time. The sacrifices in moving West
have been made most largely by women."
It is this very dearth of so many things that once made her life easy and
comfortable which throws her back upon her own resources. Here again is
woman's strength. Fertile in expedients, apt in device, an artisan to
construct and an artist to embellish, she proceeds to supply what is
lacking in her new home. She has a miraculous faculty for creating much out
of little, and for transforming the coarse into the beautiful. Barrels are
converted into easy chairs and wash-stands, spring beds are manufactured
with rows of slender, elastic saplings; a box covered with muslin stuffed
with hay serves for a lounge. By the aid of considerable personal exertion,
while she adds to the list of useful and necessary articles, she also
enlarges the circle of luxuries. An hour or two of extra work now and then
enables her to hoard enough to buy a new looking-glass, and to make from
time to time small additions to the showy part of the household.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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