The Country Child : Part 6

The American Child
by Elizabeth McCracken

(Page 9 of 13)

I have an acquaintance who is not normal in this matter. She scorns "finery," whether for use or for "locking awa." One summer she and I spent a fortnight together on a Connecticut farm. During the week the farmer and his wife, as well as their two little children, a girl and a boy, wore garments of dark-colored denim very plainly made. The children were barefooted.

"These people have sense," my acquaintance observed to me on the first day of our sojourn; "they dress in harmony with their environment."

I was silent, realizing that, if Sunday were a fine day, she might feel compelled to modify her approbation. On Saturday night the farmer asked if we should care to accompany the family to church the next morning. Both of us accepted the invitation.

Sunday morning, as I had foreseen, when the family assembled to take its places in the "three-seater," the father was in "blacks," with a "boiled" shirt; the mother, a pretty dark-eyed, dark-haired young woman, a pleasant picture in the most every-day of garments, was a charming sight, in a rose-tinted wash silk and a Panama hat trimmed with black velvet. As for the boy and the girl, they were arrayed in spotless white, from their straw hats even to their canvas shoes. The hands of the farmer and his son were uncovered; but the mother and her little daughter wore white lisle gloves. They also carried parasols - the mother's of the shade of her dress, the girl's pale blue. No family in America could possibly have looked more "blithe and bonny" than did that one in "Sunday" clothes, ready for church.

The face of my acquaintance was a study.

In it were mingled surprise and disapproval. Both these elements became more pronounced when we were fairly in the meeting-house. All the men, women, and children there assembled were also in "Sunday" clothes.

My acquaintance has the instinct of the reformer. Hardly were we settled in the "three-seater," preparatory to returning home after the service, when she began. "Do you make your own clothes?" she inquired of the farmer's wife.

"Yes," was the reply; "and the children's, too."

"Isn't there a great deal of work involved in the care of such garments as you are all wearing to-day?" she further pursued.

"I suppose there is the usual amount," the other woman said, dryly.

"Then, why do you do it - living in the country, as you do?"

"There is no reason why people shouldn't dress nicely, no matter where they happen to live," was the answer. "During the week we can't; but on Sunday we can, and do, and ought - out of respect to the day," she quaintly added.

The city is not a mere name to American country children. Increased train facilities, the improvement in the character of country roads brought about by the advent of the automobile, and the extension of the trolley system have done much to mitigate the isolation of rural communities. The farmer and his wife can avail themselves of the advantages to be found in periodical trips to the nearest city. Like other American parents, they invite their children to share their interests. The boys and girls are included in the jauntings to the city.

I once said to a little girl whom I met on a farm in Massachusetts: "You must come soon and stay with me in the city from Saturday until Monday. We will go to the Art Museum and look at the pictures."

"Oh," she cried, joyously, "I'd love to! Every time we go to town, and there is a chance, mother and I go to the Museum; we both like the pictures so much."

This little girl, when she was older, desired to become a kindergartner. There was a training-school in the near-by city. She could not afford to go to and fro on the train, but there was a trolley. The journey on the trolley occupied three hours, but the girl took it twice daily for two years.

"Doesn't it tire you?" I asked her.

"Oh, somewhat," she admitted; "but I was already used to it. We usually traveled to town on it when I was small."

"Countrified" is not the word to apply to American farmers and their families. One might as aptly employ it when describing the people of England who live on their "landed estates." Ignorance and dullness and awkwardness we shall not often find among country children. The boys and girls on the farms are as well informed, as mentally alert, and as attractive as children in any other good homes in America.

We all know Mr. James Whitcomb Riley's poem, "Little Cousin Jasper." The country boy in it, we recall, concluded his reflections upon the happier fortune of the boy from the "city" of Rensselaer with these words:

"Wishst our town ain't like it is! - Wishst it's ist as big as his! Wishst 'at his folks they'd move here, An' we'd move to Rensselaer!"

Only last summer I repeated this poem to a little girl whose home was a farm not far from a house at which I was stopping.

"But," she said, in a puzzled tone of voice, "no place is as big as the country! Look!" she exclaimed, pointing to the distant horizon; "it's so big it touches the edge of the sky! No city is that big, is it?"