The Ohio Cultivator for April 1 contains a letter from Mrs. Gage, from which we make the subjoined extracts:
I last week visited the home of my childhood in Washington county, the oldest county in the State. Perhaps I am partial, but I fancy there are farmers there as "well to do" in the world as you will often find - not millionaires, but men and women who have learned the grand secret of being comfortable about as thoroughly as any other people I know of. I visited the townships of Marietta, Newport, Belpre and Union (the latter place of my nativity). They are wide awake on the great themes of the day, such as Devons, Ayrshires, Durhams, Merinos, Saxonys and Cotswold - Shanghaes, Polands and Durkings.
The women do not seem to be much in favor of women's rights theoretically, but they are getting monstrously out of their "spheres," for they talk about all these great progressions and improvements as knowingly as the men, and some even dare to take railroad stock, bank stock, and have their say about plank roads, with the rest of them - wonder what it will all come to. * *
As I rode from farm to farm in the old familiar places of my childhood, I could not help thinking that they needed some contrivance to prevent the necessity of getting out of their carriages so often to open gates. A few years ago the roads all lay along the river banks. Now, as economy in distances seems to require, they are in many of the old neighborhoods thrown through the farms, which makes long lanes and diverse gates necessary. On one occasion I remember our lady driver alighted and opened fifteen. This, in a muddy or dusty time, would be no enviable job, and we would advise your lady readers in the country to examine "Enoch Woolman's Patent Gate," which can be opened and shut while in the carriage. You will recollect we looked at it together while at Cleveland last fall. There was a drawing of it in the Cultivator not long since (vol. 8, page 277). * *
While visiting the family of G. W. Barker, one of the little boys brought in a basket of the largest hen's eggs I ever saw. I enquired by what breed they were produced. Mrs. Barker replied that none of the brag breeds had done the wonder - that she had been in the practice of selecting the largest and finest eggs for setting for a number of years, and in this way had much improved her stock of fowls - a large assortment being a mixture of the old varieties. Those who cannot afford pay the high prices for eggs and fowls of the large kinds, would do well to improve their poultry by this simple but certain method. * *
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