IT IS OF EVERYDAY SERVICE
Mrs. Peattie Speaks of the Use of
Beauty in Ordinary
Life.
A Paper on the Subject Which Was Read
Before the Young Women's Chris-
tian Association.
There is no life, however hard and
harrased, which has not in it beauty in
one form or another. The more beauty
a life has, the happier it is. And it is
therefore clear that as we surround our-
selves with beauty we will be happy.
And happiness, I need not tell you, for
you have made the discovery a long
time ago, is the one thing that makes
life worth living.
But to be surrounded with beauty and
not to know it, would be, as you will all
agree, a mere waste of beauty. It would
be as if you were in a stange land, on
an island, rich with fruits you did
not know were edible. You might
stare to death in the midst of
plenty for the want of knowing that
the fruits were good to eat. Therefore,
to know how to discovere the beauty
about you is quite as necessary as that
the beauty should be there. And I wish
to help you, if I can, to learn how to
find out that beauty and make much of
it. I know you must already have
found out a great deal about this your-
self. Some of you have perhaps found
out a great deal more about it than I
have. To such, I can only give my
ideas, not that [Ibey?] may learn from
them, but that they may compare them
with their own.
Nothing crushes the life out of a
woman like ugly surroundings. The
farmer's wife, living out on the prairie,
is a sad example of this. She lives in a
cabin made of pine or of sod or logs. A
manure heap is in her yard. No flowers
grow in the coarse, unwatered soil of
the prairie. The grass is irodden out
of sight. There may be a few
wind torn poplars toward the stromy
northwest to serve as a wind-break, but
no shade about her door mitlgates the
glare of sun or the harsh rains of the
plains. Within her house are bare
walls, undecorated buds, a fire for
warmth, a table at which to feed. Just
the materials for satisfying the necessi
ties of life, nothing more. And day
after day comes the coaseless drudgery.
Cooking, washing, ironing cleaning,
husking, sewing, endlessly, endlessly,
over and over, the tedious labor. And
to what end! To keep longer in the
weary body the spirit which sickens
with disgust at the barrenness and pov-
erty of life.
Not long ago I was the Insane asy-
lum at Norfolk. More than one-half of
the women there were farmer' wives.
"I like to be here," one of them said
to me, looking down sadly at her hard
hands, "it's easier than work on the
farm. Only sometimes I wonder who
puts the children is bed at night, and
who braids Besale's hair."
And there was a young girl there, too,
who came from a farm. She had lived
back in Ohio, amid trees and hills, and
beautiful rivers, and the friends who
loved her. When her mother died her
father was taken with the idea of com-
ing, to a new country where he could
earn more money. So he took up a claim
out on the [?] prairie. His daughter
came with him. She worked patiently
for him in his home. She tried to study.
Dut she could not get the hills, and the
trees, and the friends of Ohio out of her
head.
"Let me go home," she said to plead
with her father, "please let me go
home." Her father was a solemn Scan-
dinavian. He had no sentiment. And
he didn't see why she should have
any.
"Home." he said, impatiently. "Why
this is home. What are you fretting
about? Haven't you get everything you
want?"
The girl said nothing more. But in
her eyes there came the look of one who
always strains the gaze after something
she may not see. And one day when
the father came home he found no meal
ready. His daughter was sitting there
in the chair, looking at him. But when
he spoke to her she did not answer. And
she has never spoken since. " Acute
melancholy mania," the doctors call it.
And it is incurable. Day after day she
sits in the asylum, head bowed over her
young hands, speechless always, dream-
ing, no doubt of how the autumn woods
back in dear old Ohio, drop their red
leaves into the river which goes singing
on its way, and how the friends she
used to call to her at night after school,
as they all went home together, before
she knew the awful solitude and silence
of the prairies.
