A snippet from "The Age of Excess"

I've just started reading a book (The Age of Excess: The United States from 1877 to 1914, by Ray Ginger), and ran across this description of life on Indiana farms (written in 1879 by an Indianapolis minister):

 "It is a weary monotonous round of cooking and washing and mending and as a result the insane asylum is 1/3rd filled with wives of farmers."

So far, this is a book well worth reading.  I expect to have more to say once I finish it.