Chickens Are Best ‘On The Table’
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Hill Country Living
By Coulter Fussell
It’s Wagner Week, and the letters from the Wellesley College girls never disappoint in smarts and wit. Enjoy!
Lebanon, KY
July 10, 1895
My Dear Jesse,
If I should begin to give you a list of my trials and tribulations since I first lighted in this heaven-forsaken community on the morning of June 14, ’95, you would understand my long silence and call out, Hold enough! long before I could finish my tale of woe. But I refrain. The strain upon your sympathetic nature would be far too great. As Miss Kibble would say, I will give you the general drift of the subject, and you can supply details and go out on particular lines for yourself.
First, Mama and I have been ill, then there were and still are our whole piles of clothes to be sewed together and last but by no means least, the care of the poultry has hung over me like the sword of this sometimes worthy Damocles. Jesse, take my advice. Do not cultivate chickens.
They are all very well in their proper place, that is on the table after they are slain and fitly prepared; but when they are alive and running around the yard scratching up the very stones of the pavement, then – but let me cease lest my emotions become uncontrollable. Perhaps you would understand if you could see me.
“Ere the early dews be falling,
‘Chickie, chickie, chickie,’ calling.”
My country-woman, will you believe me? I rise in time to feed the little beasts at 5 o’clock every morning!
You speak of Water Valley as being dull but let me tell you that you can’t appreciate what is until you have camped in this vicinity. Not one evening entertainment has there been since I came home. People seem to have forgotten me for sometimes they mistake me, for Sister Ethel and sometimes for Louise. Truly, I feel a stranger in a strange land.
The only event at all exciting since my coming home was the horseback ride I took last week. My mount was particularly frisky and seemed filled with the determination to keep several yards ahead of anything on the road. Now I think if there’s anything the reverse of “swellness” it is letting one horse push ahead of another, especially when there are only two riding, as in our case. But my horse insisted and I could not keep him back, moreover, he shied even at the lampposts, and sometimes I thought he must be preparing to jump the fences. No wonder people came to the doors and stared at us. I could not blame them although it was rather embarrassing for us.
I began reading about a page day in my Xenophon. I’ve also been trying to read the most entertaining history of Switzerland, but I read about a page and then have to put the book down. Of course, when I take it up again, I have forgotten what I have read and have to go over it again. When you see me at Wellesley next fall, you need not refer to me to settle any disputes that may arise concerning Swiss history.
George teases me day and night to tell him tales about “little Dudley Wagner,” I shall not be held accountable for any of the buried romances in which I make him figure as a hero.
What a letter I have written! Truly, I do not usually thus affect the people to whom I write.
Yours,
Bernice
