HELPING ONE ANOTHER

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2080, 4 January 1908, Page 1 (Supplement)

HELPING ONE ANOTHER

An admirable little story is told in the "Ladies' Home Journal” concerning an isolated mountain village in the l United States. Money, a feuyears ago, was very scarce' in this community. There' were no large individual fortunes among its citizens, and the men were aide by trade or farming to supply their families with only the barest necessities of food and clothes. The women never had any spare cash to buy the little luxuries which help so much to soften life. Womanlike, they wanted the se things, and they hit upon a- pi in to get them which was successful. One woman was an expert at dressmaking. She could give to plain cloth or muslin grace and lini:-li enough, in the weirds of the old song, to “will every heart and delight eve-rv eve.” Her neighbor was an expert in the making of jedlies and jams. They simply exchanged work. - The one woman's pantry was filled with delicious preserve's, and tiho other went forth beautifully clad, lo the envy of her neighbors, without the expense of a shilling. Another matron had a positive genius for recovering furniture. Slie l reni'wi'd the old chair and lounges in tlie* village, and in return lut unelenvi'ar was made' for her by one woman anil her bread baked daily by another. A young girl was an expert in making lace; a second girl could trim hats; her mother could dye and remake old gowns and wraps until they would deceive the sharpest eye. Their neighbor, again, developed great skill in laying out and tending vegetablebeds; her sister had equal luck in flower-gardens. All these women constantly gave and received help from each other. Tho service was carefully valued and pud for, but not a penny was exchanged. Naturally, after a year or,two of success, some of the most energetic and able of the women went farther afield with their work, and made considerable money. In fact, one woman’s sausage anel cottage-cheese in n short while rnnkeil so high in the village that she took her surplus to the neighboring town, sold it there, and now has a thriving business. The village drersmaker. too, carried her skill and taste to llie larger market, and is to-day one ol New York's most prosperous dressmakers. But these women probably would never leave developed, nor even il:scoveri'd, their peculiar talent, but for this practice of exchange in their native village. Is there not a useful hint in this story for the women living in lonely settlements?