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 THE COUNTRY CHURCH 
 
 9 » » » 
 
 Volume 3 
 
43O.301 
 
 
 v. 3 
 
Federal oouncil of the churches of Christ in 
 America, What every church should know about 
 its community, 
 
 General Association of Congregational Churches 
 of Massachusetts. Advance reports of various 
 committees, 1908 and 1909 
 
 McElfresh, F. The country Sunday school 
 
 MclTutt, M. B. Modern methods in the country church 
 
 MclTutt , M. B. A post-graduate school with a purpose 
 
 Massachusetts Federation of Churches. Quarterly 
 "bulletin* Facts and factors. October 1910 
 "The part of the church in rural progress as 
 discussed at the Amherst Conference." 
 
 Root, E. T. State federations 
 
 Taft, A. B. The mistress of the rural manse 
 
 Taf t , A. B. The tent mission 
 
 Taylor, G, Basis for social evangelism with rural 
 applications 
 
 Wells, G. F» An answer to the New England country 
 church question. 
 
 Wells, G. F. What our country churches need 
 
 Wilson, W. H. The church and the transient 
 
 Wilson, W. H. Conservation of boys 
 
 Wilson, W. H. The country church 
 
 Wilson, W. H. The country church program 
 
 Wilson, W. H. Don't breathe on the thermometer 
 
 Wilson, W. H. The farmers* church and the farmers' 
 iS college 
 
 OS 
 
 • • 
 
 co Wilson, W. IT. Getting the worker to church 
 
 Q_ 
 
 ui 
 
 CO 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2011 with funding from 
 
 Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/mistressofruralm03taft 
 
Wilson, W. H. The girl on the farm 
 
 Wilson, W. H. How to manage a country life 
 
 institute 
 
 Wilson, W. II* "Marrying the land." 
 
 Wilson, W. H. No need to "be poor in the country 
 
 Wilson, W. H. Synod's opportunity 
 
 Wilson, W. H. What limits the rural Evangel 
 
 »49993S4 
 
 The church and country life. Pamphlet issued 
 hy the Board of Home Missions of the Presby- 
 terian Church. 
 
Department of Church and Country Life, the Board of Home 
 Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., 156 Fifth 
 Avenue, New York. 
 
 (% MlBttMB of X\\t 
 
 Sural Mwxb? 
 
 lg Anna 1. ©aft 
 
 IN the change in modern conditions the min- 
 ister has gradually slipped from the pedes- 
 tal which was his customary location a cen- 
 tury ago to the more noble service of a brother 
 to his fellow men. The children no longer 
 scamper away in awe when the parson ap- 
 proaches the front door. But there is one 
 position of dignity and usefulness which still 
 holds its old place among changing conditions 
 at the present time-^that is, the unquestion- 
 able leadership of the minister's wife in the 
 country community. 
 
 Mistresses of the rural manse, although of 
 varied type, have much in common. As an 
 old man wisely remarked, "The minister 
 always seems to secure for his wife the very 
 best woman in the country." Often she is a 
 college graduate, frequently she has beauty 
 and personal charm, but, above all, in the ma- 
 jority of cases, she has a peculiar devotion to 
 her husband's work and more successfully 
 shares his life than the wife of the average 
 man. If ever the history of the builders of 
 country communities in America is recorded 
 there will be written large two types of 
 women ; the rural school teacher and the wife 
 of the country minister. 
 
I know one woman who has served small 
 country communities with a vision and devo- 
 tion it would be hard to equal. By far the 
 superior of her husband in ability and intel- 
 lect, her life as a minister's wife for over 
 twenty-five years had been spent in remote 
 country sections, with never a family income 
 to exceed six hundred dollars a year. She 
 was the bulwark of her husband and the sym- 
 pathetic adviser of two-thirds of the parish. 
 She was not only a college graduate, but a 
 skilled musician, a woman who would have 
 graced any cultured circle, and whose heart 
 hunger for congenial companionship was one 
 of the most pathetic experiences I have ever 
 known. All that saved her from insanity was 
 the very real devotion of her husband and the 
 service she constantly rendered to an ever 
 new parish, as the limitations of her husband's 
 ability necessitated constant moving. In spite 
 of failure which seemed to be written large in 
 his life, because of her help there was always 
 left in every parish a wholesome and immortal 
 influence for good. 
 
 I recall with loving memory another type 
 of a country pastor's wife, a woman large 
 hearted, perfectly healthy, and absolutely 
 wholesome, having a very pronounced and 
 natural distaste for the conventional round 
 of a minister's wife's duties, as viewed by the 
 church. She never could speak in public, abso- 
 lutely refused to be President of the Ladies' 
 Aid Society, and always felt that she held 
 her husband back from his largest usefulness 
 because she was so poorly fitted for the 
 spectacular work of the church life, supposed 
 to be her inherited share. Yet I found that 
 this natural mother was the beloved saint of 
 every poor family and whenever sickness and 
 sorrow came into a home in all that large 
 scattered country parish before the doctor 
 was sent for, the minister's wife was there, 
 and many a new life has been ushered into 
 this world with no other aid but that of 
 this noble, warm hearted woman. By the 
 
sedate and orthodox church people she was 
 sometimes misunderstood and criticized, but 
 never by the poor. It was her healthy, whole- 
 some, humorous sympathy that tided many 
 a family over a tragic crisis. Her husband 
 could bring a dozen people into his home 
 for dinner and be perfectly sure of a hos- 
 pitable welcome and an adequate meal. He 
 himself reached a place of distinction largely 
 because his home life was so sympathetically 
 and sanely planned that he was left free to 
 make the most of his own fine ability. 
 
 In another country parish the mistress of 
 the rural manse was not only a college gradu- 
 ate, but a woman who had been a successful 
 teacher in one of the higher institutions of 
 learning. Having a daughter who needed an 
 education, this woman supplemented her 
 husband's slender income by teaching the little 
 rural school that for once in its history, and 
 only once, had a thoroughly excellent teacher. 
 Of course the community did not appreciate 
 it, and I vividly recall the scandalized parents 
 who heartily objected to the time given to 
 nature study. The feeling of another de- 
 nomination in the community was so intense 
 that after a couple of years the minister's wife 
 gave up that effort. The interesting feature 
 was the development of the children during 
 that time : both morals and manners underwent 
 an astonishing change and an interest in the 
 country child's natural birthright had come to 
 be cherished by many of the boys and girls. I 
 remember one striking case in this connection. 
 I met one day on the street a woman of the 
 lowest type in the community, who had borne 
 an exceedingly bad reputation in her younger 
 days, and who was struggling for respect- 
 ability. In her arms she carried a bunch of 
 yellow ladies' slippers, very rare in that lo- 
 cality. I stopped and asked her about them, 
 and she told me that her daughter Lucy had 
 come to be so crazy about flowers that every 
 Sunday she made her mother tramp back into 
 the woods with her, hunting for new speci- 
 
mens to take to the teacher. I have never 
 seen this woman so tender and so human as 
 she was that day. 
 
 One young college graduate, going into a 
 country town with her husband for his first 
 pastorate, remarked to a deacon's wife that 
 she really did not know how to be a minister's 
 wife, and this bright little old lady replied, 
 out of her years of church experience, "Don't 
 you be troubled, my Dear. There is not a 
 woman in the church who cannot tell you 
 how.'; 
 
 This same young woman after a few years 
 of successful experience passed on the sug- 
 gestion that there were only two fundamental 
 needs in being a successful minister's wife : 
 the first was to know how to treat your hus- 
 band on a blue Monday and the second to 
 appear to take all the advice that is given you. 
 
 In this as in other fields of service there is 
 the pathetic story of the woman who failed, 
 but the astonishing part is the tremendous 
 successes that have been made against over- 
 whelming odds. The country pastor's wife 
 usually has every possible handicap in her 
 struggle. She has a financial problem to meet 
 the solution of which involves a miracle. She 
 has the least of outside inspiration and the 
 maximum of work, and yet with all this against 
 her, nine times out of ten if her husband 
 succeeds in his parish, it is by her ability 
 as much as his own. 
 
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