The country housewife rises betimes, and betaking herself to a hot kitchen, either prepares or oversees the preparing of the expected breakfast; and this not only for the boarders, but the "help," men and women, belonging to the establishment. Perhaps her husband, regarding her only in the light of a "farm hand," never speaks to her except on topics relating to the business of the household, and objects to the baby crying, which her diverted attention necessitates, as a "nuisance," while he swallows his breakfast.

Heated and worried, she sees her city boarders come down to breakfast in cool dresses and fresh ribbons, to enjoy the result of her toil, perhaps to find fault with it. She sees them after breakfast driving out to enjoy the delicious morning air, while she must iron clothes, or wash dishes, or prepare their dinner. Now don't you see in the differing positions of the two parties material for an explosion? It is no use to reply, if they had each attained a proper and high degree of civilization there would be no need of this. Remember you have to take human nature as you find it, and not as you wish to find it. Incessant toil coarsens and roughens, especially woman nature. It chokes the graces in the bud, and leaves only thorns and prickers. From my heart I pity such women, with not a flower in their desert lives. Still, you know city boarders had not the ordering of it; and should not, as they often are, be disliked merely for being able to lead a life of comparative ease. Ease does not always involve happiness; remember this, discouraged country housewife. Somebody has had to work hard for that ease, and it may be the very woman you envy and dislike for it. She has her Gethsemane with it, of which you know nothing, though she wear a smiling face. The landscape upon which she gazes may bring tears to her eyes instead of joy to her heart, as she drives away from your door, where you stand thinking of her only as a heartless idler for whom you are to toil.

Could you sit down together, woman and woman, and talk this all over, how different often would be your judgment of each other! She thinks, perhaps, of graves far away, or worse, living sorrows, which she cannot forget, and that will not bear thinking of, and may only be poured into the ear of "Our Father." She has learned to shut them in, and therefore you see no sign; but they are there all the same. I want you to try and remember this, because else I think many, situated as you are, make themselves unnecessary misery.

Then, again, do not call everything city boarders consider important "only a notion." If you have done making bread because your folks like pies better, try and understand that tastes and opinions may differ on so vital a point of "vittles" and digestion. If your house and its belongings are so constructed that the decencies of life are impossible, remember that because you "don't mind your husband or the men on the farm," your lady boarders may, even at the risk of being called "fussy."

To sum all up, there must be consideration on both sides. Still, the cases are rare in which farm-houses can be the best boarding-places for city people. The ideas of the two parties on the most vital questions relating to the topics I have touched upon are so widely apart, that assimilation is next to impossible. The country housewife knows much more on many subjects than her city boarder. In return, the former might often be enlightened by the latter, even on purely physical matters. But while one side starts with the "I'm as good as you" motto, and the other feels it necessary to fence this feeling at all points, the millennium of peace and good-will must of course be indefinitely postponed.