The Weekly Minnesotian

Woman and Agriculture,

We were at the annual State cattle show, in one of our larger States, but a short time since, and in loitering about the cattle quarter of the grounds, met a lady of our acquaintance, with a party of her female friends, on a tour of inspection among the beautiful Short-horns. and Devons, and the select varieties of sheep. She was the daughter of a distinguished statesman, who was also a large farmer, and a patron of great liberality, in the promotion of fine stock in his own State. She was bred upon the farm, and, to rare accomplishments in education, was possessed of a deep love for all rural objects; and in the stock of the farm she took a particular interest. Her husband was an extensive farmer, and a noted breeder of fine animals. She had her own farm, too, and cattle upon it, equally as choice as his, in her own right; and they were both competitors at the annual exhibitions. Introduced to her friends, at her request, we accompanied them in their round of inspection. There were the beautiful cows, and the younger cattle, and the sheep--all noticed, criticized and remarked upon; and with a judgment, too, in their various properties, which convinced us of her sound knowledge of their physiology, and good qualities, which she explained to her associates with all the familiarity that she would a tambouring frame. or a piece of embroidery. There was no squeamish fastidiousness; no affectation of prudery, in this; but all natural as the pure flow of admiration in a well-bred lady could be. At her most comfortable and hospitable residence, afterwards, she showed us with pride, the several cups, and other articles of plate, which her family had won as prizes, at the agricultural exhibitions, and which she intended to preserve as heir looms to her children.

This is not a solitary example; yet, a too rare one, among our fair countrywomen. Such a spirit is contagious, and we witness with real satisfaction, their growing taste in such laudable sources of enjoyment, contrary to the parvenu affectation of a vast many otherwise sensible and accomplished females of our cities and towns--comprising even the wives and daughters of our farmers, too--who can saunter among the not over select and equivocal representations, among the paintings and statuary of our public galleries, and descant with entire freedom on the various attitudes and artistical merits of the work before them, or gaze with apparent admiration upon the brazen pirouettes of a public dancing girl, amid all the equivoque of a crowded theatre. and yet whose delicacy is shocked at the exhibition of a cattle show!

Such females as we have noticed, can admire the living, moving beauty of animal life, with the natural and easy grace of purity itself, and without the slightest suspicion of a stain of vulgarity. From the bottom of our heart we trust that a reformation is at work among our American women, in the promotion of a taste, and not only a taste, but a genuine love of things connected with country life. It was not so with the mothers and the wives of the stern and earnest men who laid the foundation of their country's freedom and greatness. They were women of soul, character and stamina, who grappled with the realities of life in their labors, and enjoyed its pleasures with truth and honesty. This over-nice, mincing delicacy and sentimentality, in which their grand-daughters indulge, is but the off-throw of boarding-schools, the novelist and the prude--mere "leather and prunella." Such remarks may be thought to lie beyond the line of our immediate labor. But in the discussion of the collateral subjects which have a bearing upon a country life and residence, we incline to make a clean breast of it, and drop such incidental remarks as may tend to promote the enjoyment as well as instruction of those whose sphere of action, and whose choice in life is amid the pure atmosphere, and the pure pleasures of the country.--Allen's Rural Architecture.