"We do not find it necessary to manage at all, our breakfasts are so simple. We have only to make cocoa, and arrange the breakfast."
"Don't you cook meat for breakfast?" asked Mrs. Eastman.
"Never; our breakfast invariably consists of cocoa, or water, cold white bread and butter."
"Why, our men folks will have meat three times a day--warm, morning and noon, and cold at night. We have warm bread for breakfast and supper, always. When they work very hard, they want luncheon at ten, and again at three. I often tell our folks that it is step, step, from morning till night."
"Of course, you find no time to read," said Miss Norwood.
"No; but I shouldn't mind this, if I didn't get so dreadful tired. I often tell our folks that it is wearing me all out," said Mrs. Eastman, in a really aggrieved tone.
"Well, it is quite the fashion to starve, now-a-days, I know; but it is an awful sin," said Mr. Eastman.
Miss Norwood saw that she might as well spend her time in rolling a stone up hill, as in attempting to convince him of fallacy in reasoning.
"Clarina," said she, "did you ask Frederic to call for the other volume of the 'Alexandrian?'"
"Why, I should think that you had books enough at home, without borrowing," said Mr. Eastman, stopping by the way to rinse down his fifth dough-nut. "For my part, I find no time for reading anything but the Bible." And the deluded man started up with a gulp and a grunt. He had eaten enough for three full meals, had spent time enough for eating one meal, and reading several pages; yet he left the room with a smile, so self-satisfied in its expression, that it was quite evident that he thought himself the wisest man in New Hampshire, except Daniel Webster.
This is rather a sad picture of life among farmers. But many of my readers will bear me witness that it is a correct one, as far as it goes. Many of them have left their homes, because, in the quaint but appropriate language of Mrs. Eastman, it was "step, step, from morning till night." But there are other and brighter pictures, of more extensive application, _perhaps_, than that already drawn.
Captain Norwood had as large a farm as Mr. Eastman. His family was as large, yet the existence of the female portion was paradisiacal, compared with that of Mrs. Eastman and her daughters. Their meals were prepared with the most perfect elegance and simplicity. Their table covers and their China were of the same dazzling whiteness. Their cutlery, from the unfrequency of its contact with acids, with a little care, wore a constant polish. Much prettier these, than the dark oiled-cloth cover and corresponding _et cetera_ of table appendages, at Mr. Eastman's. Mrs. Norwood and her daughters carried _system_ into every department of labour. While one was preparing breakfast, another put things in nice order all about the house, and another was occupied in the dairy.