TWO PICTURES | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 21, 1878

TWO PICTURES.

THE POOR RICH MAN AND THE RICH POOR MAN.

In the excellent address delivered by Mrs. Matilda Fletcher to “Farmers’ Wives and Daughters,” at the Nebraska State Fair, we meet with two pictures of farm life, which are so suggestive, that we reproduce them here, regretting that we have not space for the entire lecture.

FIRST PICTURE: THE POOR RICH MAN.

A short time since I visited at the home of one of these gentlemen: a good man, and a gentleman he supposed himself to be. To eat, to sleep, to accumulate money and land, was the extent of his aspiration; and yet at family prayer he informed God complacently that he “presented himself and family a living sacrifice to the service of Heaven.” Living, indeed! He was the deadest sacrifice extant,—dead to all grace and harmony and form, of color, of feeling. He had hundreds of acres of grain, extensive woodlands and orchards, droves of horses and herds of cattle; and his great barn of a house had not a single carpet or picture, only the very plainest furniture, and not enough of that. His extensive library consisted of Patent Office reports, “Robinson Crusoe,” “Pilgrim’s Progress,” and a few interesting volumes upon horse-doctoring and sheep-raising. Good enough books in their way, and perhaps necessary to him, but not a book or a picture to minister to the eager young souls clustering about his hearth. His wife was a silent, broken-spirited woman; his eldest boy had fled to the far West, hoping upon some crag or peak of the dear old mountains to catch a glimpse of the sunshine of life; the eldest daughter, a sweet, intelligent girl, was maid of all work. In the evening she came and sat in my room until a late hour, and I was not surprised when, in sentences broken with tearful emotion, she gave me an account of her trials. One thing was, they never had anything to lighten their labor; no sewing, washing, or wringing machine, nor even a pump in the cistern; but she merely referred to this; she was willing to work, and work hard. The burden of her complaint was, that they never had anything to make the home attractive or home-like. Once she had planted some flowers, but the father had mowed them down as a sinful waste of time. She moaned again and again, “We never have anything beautiful or nice, and we are so unhappy, mother and us children;” and yet the dear heart kept saying, “Father is a good man; he doesn’t understand how we suffer.”

THE RICH POOR MAN.

I went with my young friend one day to visit the “poor farmer,” the man with “only forty acres and one team,” and the grounds about his home were like a lovely park. The house was a little brown gem of a cottage, with green blinds, and dainty green trellis-work here and there, with vines and flowers, while a great spreading oak, at a little distance beyond the shrubbery, gave it all such a restful, comforting look that we were prepared for anything to come, even in the line of miracle. As we passed to the door we deliberately paused at the threshold to survey its fresh loveliness. The farmer was there, as it was evening, and he never works late except in great emergencies. He wore a fresh linen suit, with gay slippers. It was decidedly the children’s hour, and they, five in number, were distributed around papa. The mother was reading aloud in a new book. Her dress and hair had received attention, and the appointments of the whole house and of the farm, as I took pains to ascertain, were in good taste and wholly for the use and happiness of the family. Every room was carpeted, and, although there were no expensive adornments, there were pretty lithographs and engravings; there were delicate shells, and vases and bouquets in abundance. There was a liberal supply of books, but their real library consisted in an excellent array of papers. A poor man, indeed! He lived for the happiness of his family, and he was rich and blessed in their love and intelligence. He could well afford to smile at the abundance that dwarfed and enslaved his rich neighbor.—Inter-Ocean.