Bucolic Reading

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB.

BEFORE me lies a pile of curiously interesting periodicals, giving a glimpse into a world nearly unknown to cities, although so well “ exploited” for dialect stories.

These papers are almost a new product of our fecund civilization. Their like exists nowhere else, and they are wholly American. That they flourish with us proves conclusively that the hard-working women to whose tastes they minister and whose needs they supply are brighter in every way than their kind in any other country.

These periodicals do not belong to the “ literary ” world. They are about the most obscure of printed things. Not one in a hundred readers of these lines ever saw them. Their cheap paper and type denote their humble sphere, and by their general appearance indicate the thrift and economy which are their attributes. Having already reached tens of thousands of country kitchens, they are tireless in their efforts to extend their domain ; and their premium lists are both interesting and suggestive. A Western paper offers ice-cream freezers, corsets, and cheap jewelry, evidently with an eye to farm girls. An Eastern one bids for the patronage of girls in the “ singingseats ” by an offer of small church organs. These periodicals are the most neighborly of visitors. No literary formality reminds that one is reading print, and not chatting over the stove or Monday’s line. Their easy sociability comes of the fact that the shrewd editors allow the housewives themselves to fill much of the paper with what they call Kitchen Chats, written on the back doorstep, or, as one of them says, “sitting on the corner of the wood-box.” These chats establish communication between remote sections. The farmeress in Maine writes to her paper her way of dyeing carpet rags or whitewashing her pantry. By and by a farmeress in far Oregon writes to the same journal thanking the Maine wife, and describing her own rag-mats or her way of making cheese. Not unfrequently the two are thus brought into a personal and private correspondence, exchanging recipes, patterns, flower seeds, and what not. One such correspondence between a Montana claim and a New Hampshire farm is already three years old. The writers exchange photographs and family histories:; name their cows and chickens, as well as their children, for each other. They will probably never meet unless in a world where kitchens are no more, but in this one, at least, they are a “solid comfort ” to each other.

The English of this “ chatter ” is not quietly classic. It is gasping and breathless, as if the suds were boiling over or the scent of scorching cake in the air. Cooking, washing, ironing, mending, making, the care of children, flowers, birds, poultry, etc., furnish subjects more interesting than ever came up in Noctes Ambrosianæe.

These periodicals all give stories. Nothing in the stories tempts to rainbow-following for fairy gold. The lights are all vertical, the forms definite. Nothing is there to breed discontent with the farms, where they are chiefly read, although —and here is greater than expected wisdom — even the farm is not gilded and refined, but merely brightened with the clear daylight of good temper and good sense.

In all these homespun and bucolic stories nobody travels in Europe. Ours might be a world without cathedrals and castles, without traditions, without even a past, for all these guileless stories tell. No heroine is haunted by pale memories shrieking piteously through the night ; none trample the grass over graves by day with shuddering feet; and never a man covets his neighbor’s wife, however he may admire her fishballs and doughnuts.

Rustic picnics, unexpected company, helpful guests or hindering, tea parties, washday meals, triumphant lunches and disastrous dinners, take the place of music and moonlight, raiment and cooings, in more sentimental fiction. One story is founded upon the religious effect of a change from salt-rising to yeast bread. Another is based upon the moral influence of carpet rags. Occasionally a deft touch in these stories, written chiefly in farmhouses, surprises, and makes one wonder how much real literary talent is born to blush unseen and to wither there.

In the homes so plainly pictured here almost everything is “ home-made.” The extraordinary prescience which finds treasures in apparently chaotic refuse savors of Robinson Crusoe’s romantic realism.

The “ poetry,” which the editors announce will not be paid for, is not, strange to say, in the least sylvan, pastoral, or romantic. Neither is it picturesque, “ yearning,” or passionate. No Psyche soul beats its radiant wings against adamantine fate. Either hunger for the Vague has not penetrated to our American farms, or its plaints have been “ declined with thanks ” as insufficiently “ moral ” and didactic.

We other women, for whom all things are “ ready - made,” from dish-mops to coiffures, may imagine such lives burdened to the last degree. We need but to read those periodicals, and mark the bright enthusiasm shimmering over every line, to realize that the necessity of work is one of humanity’s blessings, and that in intelligent labor is the happiness of these active women, with their beelike and birdlike instincts to gather and build and hum.

The farm larder is seen to be, except for groceries, almost exclusively of home culture. Receipts for cooking pork, corned beef, salt codfish, poultry, eggs, and “ canned stuff ” abound. Corn meal, rye, buckwheat, and rice are largely en évidence. But the cakes and puddings are of the plainest, and the aim of every offered receipt is for a result as good as has ever been offered before, and cheaper.

It is not uninteresting to know that farm tables, no less than oblique-eyed heathen, illustrate ways that are dark, even if not tricks that are vain. They offer “ suet puddings ” in which is no suet, but chopped salt pork. In various cakes this salt pork economizes the butter saved for market. “ Chicken salad ” is evolved from fresh pork and cabbage ; and salt pork wrapped in sage dressing masquerades as “ poor man’s goose.” Dried apples, most unlovely of farm products, are compounded into cakes as well as into pies and puddings. There are mock mince pies without meat; oyster “ patties ” straight from the garden ; mock custards from the pump, when the cows are dry, or the milk goes to fatten the summer boarder.

The Exchange Department, prominent in all these papers, is also interesting. Women raise rare hens’ eggs to exchange for “ crazy scraps ” and carpet rags. From West Virginia comes an offer of Indian arrow points for shells from the Atlantic coast. Pampas grasses from California can be exchanged for the back breadths of old gowns suitable for making over for children. Texas proposes cinnamon bull lets for two yards of calico ; and Montana will send petrified wood and moss agates for soiled ribbons that can be dyed. Vermont offers a sure cure for rheumatism in exchange for a book on etiquette. Patterns for garments, especially children’s, are an active circulating medium, as also are flower seeds and bulbs and “reading matter.” “Seasides” fly about like birds. It is certain that even our insufficient copyright law would never have been enacted had farm kitchens had a voice in the matter.

The exchange of books is a begetter of great cheer. In a secluded life anything is that lends excitement to the arrival of the mail. A “Shut-in ” — that is, one confined to the house by a chronic malady — writes to the Shut-in Department, where are represented dozens like herself. She tells what she most needs to brighten her darkness, whether materials for work or reading matter. Usually she receives what she asks, for the kindly spirit and desire to do good, among back doorsteps, are as vital as they are beautiful. Books are not always given outright. Sometimes they are “put in circulation.” Thus every reader of traveling Middlemarch, Jane Eyre, or John Halifax writes her name in it and the date of her holding as she passes it on. In time it returns to its owner enriched with many autographs, and doubtless also much spent in its gracious service.

There is almost no demand among either “ Shut-ins ” or the uutrammeled Exchange for the literary sensations of the hour. Robert Elsmere. and John Ward are not sought for, Craddock seems unknown. There is not even a whisper of Henry James, Julian Hawthorne, or Fawcett, scarcely one of Howells. It is a little singular that Ouida has almost no askers. Nobody calls for Browning, but Whittier and Longfellow are in demand. Black, Hardy, George Meredith, are out of court. Tolstóy, Ibsen, De Maupassant, are unborn to this world. The Atlantic, Harper’s, Century, Scribner’s, are very much less in demand than Peterson’s, Godoy’s, Modern Priscilla, Dorcas, Lady’s Companion, Park’s Magazine, Floral Cabinet, and the New York Ledger. Nobody wants the Arena, Forum, North American Review, but the various “Homes,” “Hearths,” “Firesides,” and “ Households ” are clamored for. The Duchess, Florence Warden, Laura Jean Libby, are in request ; also Ben-Hur, and even now The Wide, Wide World and The Lamplighter. There are calls for hymn books, but none for Walt Whitman ; for Talmage’s sermons, but none for The Quick and the Dead.

It is evident that in her kitchen the American farmeress has “ a pretty good time.” She likes her business, and so far as may be makes an art of it. She has a fair purpose if indeed a “ Philistine ” one, and her successes are satisfactory even though not thrilling. It is seen, too, that she does almost none of the rude labor which falls to wives of petits cultivateurs in Europe. Now and then a Western girl writes of binding wheat and trampling hay, but such is only the picturesque toil of Homer’s maids, who were not the worse for it, but immortal. These periodicals recognize the poultry yard as belonging to the farmer’s wife, but not the kitchen garden ; the dairy, but not the cows.

Housekeeping and home-making are the only responsibilities of the farmer’s wife lucky enough to be American.