The American Country Girl

Scene I.—Court of King Eric.

King seated on throne. Princess Elaine beside him, attended by her three maids of honor. A loud knocking is heard. Omar goes to the door and returns.

Omar [bowing low before throne]—Your Majesty, a visitor has come.

King—Bring him in.

Sir Constantine [bowing low before the throne]—Most noble King, I beg of you your daughter's hand in marriage.

King [stamps impatiently]—No! Out of my royal presence at once!

Knight—Farewell! Farewell!

Princess Elaine [rising]—Alas! Alas! It is so sad! Father, if ever thou carest for my happiness, grant him my hand.

King—Come back, daughter, be not so foolish.

Scene II.—Under the Window.

Knight [kneeling, sings]—"Oh, ma charmante. Dost thou love me, fair one?" etc.

Princess—Yea, Sir Knight; Cupid's arrow hath in truth pierced my heart.

Knight—And wilt thou elope with me? Fear not.

Princess—I fear lest thou should think I bear no love for my father, or that I am too easily won. But yea, I will.

Knight [bends low and kisses her hand]—I will come even on Wednesday next. Will it be long, sweetheart?

Princess [waves hand and tosses a kiss]—Yea, it will be long.

Scene III.—The Elopement.

Knight—See, dearest, I am come, and we shall flit away to my castle. Step forth from thy lattice. Quick! Spring into my arms.

Princess—It is even so.

Scene IV.—King Eric's Court.

King [rushes in excitedly]—Where is my daughter? My daughter! [Omar appears in response to bell.] Omar, scour the kingdom for that wretched Sir Constantine. He no doubt knows something about my daughter.

Omar [returns and bows low]—Your Majesty, I have searched everywhere except in the forest.

King—What! not found my daughter? Now methinks the forest is the very place to which she and her scoundrel Knight would take themselves. Now will I creep all through the forest, and mayhap I will find these madcapped lovers. Their ill-gained happiness will soon be brought to an end.

Scene V.—The Forest.

Knight [radiantly]—We are now safe. Thy father would never hunt us here. We shall spend our day in the forest.

Princess—It is even so.

Knight [looking around joyously]—The birds shall sing at our wedding. Fragrant wild flowers shall be thy wedding bouquet. Oh! let us scorn not Nature, for she and Love are great friends.

Princess—Yea, 'tis so.

Knight [suddenly in alarm]—Ah, woe! woe! Here comes thy father. I must not flee, but fight.

Princess [clinging to Knight]—Oh! go not forth, my Knight!

Knight—That angry voice! I hoped never to hear more. I am young, I thought experienced. He is old, yet mighty.

King [enters]—Fight with me, Sir Knight, and defend your lady with your body. Do your best, for I am come to test your fame.

Knight—Alas! I am weak and my courage fails. Spare me, O King.

King—So, thou pleadest for mercy. Yea, mercy thou shalt have. But go thou away, far away. Be banished, nevermore to return.

King [embracing daughter tenderly]—Weep not, daughter. I shall banish thy lover till thou shalt be more careful how thou dost elope. Have done with thy weeping. Thou shalt have no tears left for thy other lovers if they dare to come.

Princess [in tears]—Ah, cruel father! dost thou have no pity for me?

King—Why did'st thou not tell me before, oh, daughter! I knew not how true was thy love. Would I could call the brave Sir Constantine back. But that is against the law.

Scene VI.—The Knight's Death.

Knight [calls]—Oh, Omar!

Faithful bearer of my letters, take this to my Lady and tell her that I have died of grief.

Scene VII.—Court of King Eric.

Princess [as Omar enters]—Ah! see! here comes a messenger. Now will I see what my dear Sir Knight will say to me.

"Dear Lady—I have died of grief, and shall never see thee more.

"Constantine."

Princess—Alas, Alas! My Knight, I will join thee.

King [enters sorrowfully]—Oh! 'tis but to-day that my daughter had a letter saying that her lover had died of grief. She, too, has died of sorrow, and I shall have the same fate. Woe, that I had no time to repent!

THE END

The utter childlikeness of this playlet is one of its chief charms. Any one may play it—it is not copyrighted. And if it may seem forbiddingly dark in tone, perhaps in spite of the empurpled tragedies of its ending, the pang will be turned to joy when the king and the princess arise promptly from the ground and assume their proper character as father and little daughter amid the wild plaudits of the audience, consisting probably of mother only.

Nothing can be better for the children than to engage them in the making of little plays such as this. There are now many books of plays for children and young people. Of course there are not enough. There should be one hundred where there is now but one. If all the young people would go to work devising plays we would soon have more; and plays made by themselves for themselves would be better for their use than any others could ever be.

Where the life of the sixteen-year-old daughter in the home may become most useful may perhaps consist in getting the parents and the children to join her in carrying through the great endeavor of presenting a play, some winter afternoon in the kitchen, for their own delectation and education. It is easy to imagine the whole family, including the father, whatever his age may be, taking part in a play; and if the father finds it hard work to fall down dead at the proper minute, it is good enough for him for allowing himself to grow so stiff! And if he finds it difficult to feel at home in a helmet of pasteboard trimmed with gilt paper and decorated with dust-brush plumes, he may remember that he is ridiculous in his own eyes only, not in those of the enraptured boy and girl who are fellow actors with him.

An unfailing source of good plots is always at hand in the Bible; and no better way to impress these stories upon the memory could be found than by turning the incidents into little plays and tableaux for the family to show. The Sabbath School lesson could be metamorphosed into a joy and the symbolisms of Christmas and Easter could be made a reality by the legitimate use of the dramatic instinct that is innate in all of us.

A form of art akin to the play is the moving picture. This source of amusement and of education is within the reach of every country community that has learned the secret of joining hands. The men and especially the women of the community should be invariably present and should instantly and firmly object to any film that seems to them harmful. This being provided, the young people are safe and may have the pleasure and instruction that come from seeing displayed the clean, adventurous story, the doings of other lands and of historic events long past.

CHAPTER XXVI

Truth is eternal, but her effluence,
With endless change, is fitted to the hour;
Her mirror is turned forward, to reflect
The promise of the future, not the past.

—Lowell.

CHAPTER XXVI

PAGEANTRY AS A COMMUNITY RESOURCE

It is not many years since the pageant began to be taken up in this country as a form of artistic expression. When we began to realize how strangely romantic our course of history as an American people had been, when we viewed our past struggle to subdue the soil and overcome the difficulties of pioneering as a most tragic story, as a heart-moving tale fitted for the great epic and for the great tragic drama, then we felt the impulse to place these tales of old-time heroism in fitting artistic form before the eyes of the people.

It was not without meaning that the desire to express in dramatic form the pictures of our historic past had its earliest origins not in the metropolitan square but on the village green, with a background not of skyscrapers but of sequoia groves. Again we see rural conditions more favorable to the budding powers of human genius. There our newly awakened enthusiasm for community betterment promptly seized the pageant as a fitting means of expressing its urgent emotion. Looking forward into the future we desired to express our hopes for enlargement as we had expressed our vision of the meaning of past struggles.

There are plain reasons why this loose and easy dramatic form is especially adapted for the use of a town or village when it wishes to portray dramatically its own historic and community experiences. In fact, American pageantry has had from the earliest attempts a distinct reference to the welfare of the community and to the development of the rich resources of fellowship to be found in concerted action. This was amply shown at Thetford, Vermont, where one of the earliest and most successful pageants was given. That was as late as 1911. The author of the text frankly stated that the pageant seemed to him the expression of a movement for the general development of the resources of the town, agricultural, educational and social. The work should become, then, a study of the rural problem, and a contribution toward the effort to make the country town fulfil its ideal as a place to live. In this effort the pageant has been a success; it has proved a molding, unifying and inspiring influence; it has quickened into life the slumbering energies of the people. By awakening pride in the characteristics of the town and the region, interest in the history of their past, and hopes for the better things of the future, it has created a shoulder to shoulder feeling and a vivification of energy that have brought new ideas to life and given courage to try them.

In the pageant reality may be mingled with symbolism—the latter for passages not susceptible of representation on so large a stage as the village green, or for certain elements of village life that could not be put into direct dramatic form. For instance, after some scenes from the early history of a town have been shown, the conditions of modern times may be symbolized by embodying the new life in a character to be called the Spirit of Pageantry or the Spirit of Putting Joy into Work. She will be radiant with hope and joy, and her motions will be stately and ritualistic. Prone upon the ground before her may lie a character representing the Village of Time Past, clothed in a dingy dress and expressing melancholy in her whole appearance. The Spirit of Pageantry may lift her up and give her encouraging words. Following this a figure on a white horse who represents America may enter and the pageant may close with the orchestra and chorus singing "O say can you see by the dawn's early light?" Something a little like this was done at Thetford, Vermont.

The pageant at St. Johnsbury had an advantage in that its name suggested knightliness and gave opportunity for armor, processions of knights, and chivalric poems. They had also the Fairbanks' Scales as a motive suggesting an interesting symbol for their historic treatment. In Meriden, Vermont, Education for the New Country Life was taken as a theme and the founding of their Academy was the central feature. The individuality of every town may be expressed in its pageant. No two would ever be alike.

How a pageant idea may be used to illuminate a sacred or ecclesiastical subject may be seen in a masque that was written for the dedication of a chapel. The plan is very simple. One character represents the church as a whole, and another, a younger woman, stands for the Spirit of the Chapel. This character presents a model of the chapel to the Church, who in stately measures of verse, receives the gift, and asks to know what the services of the people are to be. A series of scenes are the answer. Women and children come with their burdens of sickness and poverty and are helped. A battalion of boys show their drill and receive prizes. Various clubs offer entertainment. Strangers of different nationalities are welcomed one after another, and before the evening is over one has seen an exhibition of model devices for making a church touch every side of the life in a community. Of course a church that has no benevolent activities in working order could not hope to provide a pageant that would have dramatic interest. A dead church could only betray its poverty. And yet—perhaps it would be salutary for some churches if they could be stung into such betrayal: it might awaken them to a sense of their own losses of the joy of giving and of doing.

A story that has been passed down from generation to generation can be used in a pageant. This is delightfully illustrated in a scene from The Mohawk Trail, a pageant given in the summer of 1914 at North Adams, Massachusetts, in honor of the re-opening after many centuries of disuse of an old path over the Hoosac Mountain that used to be the connecting link between the Iroquois Indians of New York and the tribes of New England. Eleven hundred persons took part in this great play. There were Indians, early settlers, Quakers, Revolutionary soldiers, Spirits of the Pines and Spirits of the Waters, the Little Creatures of the Swamp, and so on. The inhabitants of several towns took part and the Muse of Cooperation (a newcomer in that select Greek group!) must have waved happy wings over the whole mountain region.

The scene referred to was based on the following story: There were many Quakers among the early settlers in that region and among them was a pretty young Quaker sister that an English officer fell in love with, thereupon asking her father to give him her hand in marriage. The old gentleman said: "If thee will give up thy fighting, thy sword and thy sinful coat of scarlet, and become a good Quaker gentleman, thee may have my daughter, sir, for she loves thee." The officer, it is said, did give up his commission, marry the pretty Quaker and adopt the Quaker garb and the Quaker principles.

In the pageant this quaint incident appears in this wise: The British officer alights on the pageant green near the meeting-house and stands waiting. The young Quakeress comes demurely along, picking flowers as she approaches. While they are conversing, the people begin to enter the church. As they pass they look with curiosity upon the two young people, who when the father and mother come near, show the very picture of woe. The British officer however steps toward the parents, leading the maiden by the hand and says: "Friend Bowerman, may I have thy daughter for my wife? I love her, sir, and will guard her with my life. Do not, I pray thee, say me nay. My happiness and hers depend upon the decision." Here the soldier and the maiden kneel before the stern parents. Says Friend Bowerman: "Rise from thy knees, Friend, kneel only to thy God. Thee may have my daughter, sir, upon one condition. Thee must give up thy fighting, thy sword, and thy sinful coat of scarlet and become a good Quaker gentleman. Think well on this, good friend, before making thy decision."

Then Friend Bowerman and the mother go toward the meeting-house, leading the daughter sorrowfully with them. The English officer now seats himself to think and decide. Immediately thereupon things begin to happen. Enter Cupid with his little bow and dances about him. Next the Spirit of War rides across the green; the soldier sees the war-horse and runs eagerly toward it. He leads it forward as if about to mount, when presto! Cupid runs forward, and draws his bow. The officer returns to his seat, drops his face and thinks some more.

Now the people come out of the church and gather in groups shaking hands with each other. Friend Bowerman comes along with wife and daughter. Cupid hides in the bushes. The British officer rises from his meditation, steps forward and says:

"Friend Bowerman, I have made my decision. I lay my sword, my scarlet coat and my commission at the feet of thy daughter whom I ask to be my beloved wife."

Friend Bowerman says to Rachel his wife, "What sayest thou, Rachel?" and she nods acquiescence. Then he says to the officer, "Thee may have her, Friend, for she loves thee."

Then the people gather around the couple, the wedding ceremony is performed, the officer and the pretty bride mount and ride away, the Quakers disperse, and Cupid dances gleefully about the green.

There were ninety Quakers in this scene and nearly all of them were direct descendants of the true Quakers of the earlier time. This adds, of course, immensely to the interest of the scenes. To think that one is enacting a story that our great grandparents lived, making history as they lived, is a wonderful experience. But we are living too; we are making history. And perhaps the things we do shall be thought worthy of remembrance.

The pageant in this country has an opportunity that almost no other land on the globe can afford. This is illustrated in one of the scenes of the St. Johnsbury play, a town whose business of scale-making has called to the town many people of many different nationalities. In one of the Interludes of their pageant companies of people entered in the costumes of the countries from which they had come and danced the folk dances of their various nations. So for instance the French Canadians came in and danced the old Vintage-dance to the proper folk-music accompaniment. Following them the Germans danced the German Hopping-dance; then the Scandinavians gave their Kulldansen, the Scotch the Scotch reel, the Irish the St. Patrick's jig, the Italians the tarantella. After these separate dances were finished, all the different companies came in together across the greensward and marched in and out in interlocking wheels, until they formed themselves into one large glorious united wheel together. The beautiful lesson is very plain.

In such scenes as these full opportunity is specially given for the young people to take part. They can be choruses; they can be pioneers or fairies; they can be flowers and birds and butterflies; they can be spirits of waves, of breezes, of leaves and brooklets, all in appropriate costumes of tissue-paper wings or khaki Indian suits, or blue denim cloth with patterns cut out and sewed on. This gives every one a feeling of being a part of the day's great celebration and awakens the spirit of home and community in the heart.

To represent a pageant with broad historic effects one must have many characters and a great deal of perspective. But the beauty of it is that this great piece of work is one that can engage the interest of every last man, woman or child in the whole town. There are so many parts to the completed whole, there are so many kinds of ability that can be brought into play that every member of the community can be given a portion of the structure for his or her responsibility; and the final joy of achievement is gained, the sense of being a part of a great whole, the joy of the community working together.

There must be committees. All the noted and leading people of the town and county may be made into a Committee of Patrons and Patronesses. To these may be added the names of any people of note whose interest can be gained. The honor of heading the committee will perhaps not be declined by the Governor of the State, and any literary people who may live in the vicinity will be proud to give their names. The author or authors of the text, the composer of the music and the Master of the Pageant who has main charge of the dramatic presentation, will be in a distinctive group by themselves. There should be a suitable person to see that the historical matters are correctly used, a historical censor or critic. There must be a committee to take charge of funds incoming and outgoing, one for advertising, one for costume, one for properties. Other committees will have charge of buildings and grounds, of seating and lighting, and any other matters that are likely to come up, such as care of horses or oxen; and if there are to be any eagles, ostriches, rattlesnakes or giraffes—why, safety and agreeableness would seem to require that there should be a committee for each of these! It is evident that the pageant will find use for all the tastes and abilities of the whole village, not to say the entire township. Many and many a meeting will be held and many a discussion about the olden time and what the grandparents now have to carry on their various industries and household and town activities. And every boy and girl who takes part in those discussions will have a deepened realization of the hardships that our ancestors went through to prepare the way for the blessings that we now enjoy.

The pageant not only cultivates the historic sense; it also makes us better understand ourselves in the present; and it quickens our sense of living for the things that are to be and that are to be a growth from the things that are, as what we are now has come up from the past. The picture of the heroism of our ancestors gives us the enlargement that always comes from the view of great ideals of courage and nobility. So our culture and our spiritual height are enlarged, our sense of the dignity of the human race is heightened, and our determination to live highly is intensified.

It is a good thing to present any dramatic piece that has been created by the great minds and poets of earth. This should also be a part of our endeavor. To do this brings us into a closer touch with the mind of the great artistic creator than we can come in any other way. We have then held up before our mind the ideal of great artistic form and the influence of this model will be incalculable upon our education and development. But there is a certain spontaneity of self-expression, a certain arousing of the intellectual powers and of the artistic feeling, that comes with the making of our own play, that can hardly be otherwise gained. Both experiences are within the opportunity of any village or community. Both joyful means of self-expression can be mastered and experienced. The play and the pageant form the greatest means for the expression of the artistic energy of a community that can be devised.

The pageant may be the happy means of bringing the whole town together. It breaks over all dividing lines because every individual in the community can have at least some part in it. The pride in the success of the whole can be shared by every least child, by each most important person, by the rich and the poor, by the wise and by the unlearned; for there has been a place for each one, according to his ability. The pageant is democratic; all individuals work for the success of the whole, not for the glorification of any single one, never for the glorification of self. It develops a personality of the community itself.

Above all things it gives the person and the community a chance to gain the joy that comes from the expression of that creative sense that lies at the base of all artistic ability, that power in which the human being is most near to the God-like. Here the poets and dramatic writers of earth, the great souls of the Greek and of the Elizabethan ages have been partakers of the fervor that was with God under the symbol of "Wisdom" as that wonderful poem in the eighth chapter of the Book of Proverbs, relates, when with joy He created the earth.

Among all the good things that may come in the new upspringing of this artistic interest, the young women in the rural realm have a distinct function. In the planning of the play or pageant the young people will be brought together in social ways that are full of opportunity for high-toned acquaintanceship and culture under the best auspices. Ladies and gentlemen, young men and young ladies, will be working together for an artistic purpose; the result will be not only an enlarged community spirit among all, but a great number of personal ties that will be of enduring value. May not this be still another interest that will bind the younger members of the village life more closely to the home place so that they cannot be lured away?

There are pageants that may be enacted by young girls alone when fairies and sylphs and angels hold the stage and delight the eye with their many-hued robes and their beautiful movements. The Young Women's Christian Association has given some altogether delightful masques and pageants; the Camp Fire Girls have done the same. In their societies, whatever the kind, Country Girls may undertake some of the plays of smaller scope but quite as beautiful in their way as those in which the whole community join, and in this way find their hands filled with pleasing and recompensing labor.

CHAPTER XXVII

Raise the stone: thou shalt find me there;
Cleave the wood, and there am I.

—Logia of Jesus.

CHAPTER XXVII

ORGANIZATIONS, ESPECIALLY THE YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION

In a Memoir that belongs to the classic traditions of our country, that of David Brainerd the Missionary, we read that he besought the Lord that he might not be too much pleased and amused with dear friends and acquaintances one place and another. We have now a new and different ideal of community feeling; we pray that we may be "pleased and amused with dear friends and acquaintances," for we realize that only by having ideas together and working together may we reach the highest ideals not only for the community but for the individual.

Where isolation becomes really intolerable, the Country Girl cannot be blamed for taking the first means to relieve herself of its dangers. But where there is a possibility of making a stagnant place become healthily busy and interesting, she must be blamed for not making an attempt in that direction.

An association of the girls alone is always possible if there is even one more than one to start with. Perhaps others will soon join. The most unpromising material, if it is human material, can be brought into line and made something of. But there must be a start.

Now and then we know there is a girl found among the good people of a village who has thoroughly bad inclinations. Such a one, after the case is made clear, must be put into the hands of some person of trained experience and mature judgment. This is not to be managed by the girls themselves. Because of this possibility it is thought best that every club for girls, especially for the younger girls, should have a guardian or a secretary of older years. Whatever rules are made, say, for instance, by the Young Women's Christian Association, in the fundamental plans for societies of girls, we may be sure they have been devised by people who are good, and who desire the best for the girls, and who understand the whole situation and speak and act from this knowledge.

It may be that the girl who will entertain the bold idea of forming a club or society is not by any means the one who most needs the club. She thinks of it because some happy circumstance has developed in her a power of initiative, the courage or instinct for beginning something new. It takes courage sometimes to undertake an absolutely new work; and the girl who has been always helped, never told to go ahead and do things for herself, will not have developed that power. The ability to start things can be hypnotized out of anybody; the faculty for it, if once possessed, can be deadened or suppressed beyond the last degree of vitality. To take the first step is a matter of life or death with such a long suppressed nature; but that one step over, the crushed vitality springs strangely to life and then every step is easier. Then the beautiful experience lies before you of constantly growing life; faculties that you hardly knew you possessed spring into being. This is growth, and growth is the only life.

There will sometimes be in the village one girl who cherishes a higher ideal of conduct than she sees embodied in the life about her. Where did she get it? Perhaps from a mother who, immersed in her home cares and burdens, has taken little part in the affairs in the town. She in turn received from her mother delicate thoughts that have vanished from the village when a lower standard of manners came in with certain new and less cultivated people. In this new atmosphere the daughter has tried to live and has been mostly alone. Lack of companionship has made her unsocial and somewhat unbending. Her mind lacks swift response because she has had no chance to practise swiftness of response in conversation and repartee. Moreover, she has not the influence among the girls that she ought to have because they take her search for better forms of conduct for self-conceit; they consider her proud and stiff and priggish; those touches of ceremoniousness which she chooses because of her passion for beauty and grace, they consider affectation. There is no place like the country to put affectation in its place; but it is as possible there as elsewhere to misjudge the real sources of inspiration in matters of conduct.

In the hearts of these very girls who look askance at the solitary one as she passes along the village path and talk among themselves about her primness and her pride, there may be a great admiration for her after all, a desire to copy all her little touches of elegance, a swift noting of her graces and of everything new she adds to her repertoire of manners. If she keeps her body very straight and holds her chin correctly, they will be looking in the glass to find out whether their spinal column can be stiffened to give the same effect. They may laugh at her but they try to imitate her.

After all, you see, the fundamental standards are the same; the difference being that one girl comes almost to the point of living up to them, the other girls have tried and because of ignorance or lack of opportunity have failed, and have looked upon their failure until they have despaired of ever succeeding. Fundamentally there is the same desire at the heart of both the refined recluse girl who longs to have company among the other girls, and the less agreeable, less refined and less cultivated girls who secretly envy while they ridicule, and are waiting only for the open door to enable them to walk in and leave their coarseness and bungling outside.

The first step for such a girl to take in working out her desire to be of help to the other girls, is to show them in some way that she really cares for them and that, as far as her heart goes she is one with them. If she can only get out of her seeming stiffness for a little while and get down to the real heart beneath, the other girls will respond, and pretty soon the happy influence of the spirit of unity will assert itself and the true basis in desire for better things—whatever they may turn out to be—will be a bond between the elements. Then some kind of play or some kind of work may be proposed. It does not matter so much what is done as it matters that something shall be done and done together. Do something together—that is the main thing. Anything, anything at all—only that it be together! Then after the doing of something together has begun, the next steps are possible.

The young woman in the rural community may see things that need to be done and be unable to think of any way to accomplish the reform. Here comes in the good of an association. For instance, something may be going wrong in the village. There is a dangerous manure heap by a wall. On the other side of the wall lives a family with children. The big black flies are creeping on the heap and then they fly over and light upon the baby's lips, dropping death-dealing poison as they move along over the pure skin of the child. What is there that any one girl can do about such a thing? She may feel that she is not the one to approach the old gentleman who owns the uncared-for barnyard; he would never listen to what some chit of a girl would say to him; no, evidently that would do no good. But if the young girl has some social position and some popularity among the other girls in the village, she can organize them into a club or society; she can make out programs for meetings into which some useful modern subjects are sprinkled; she can in a little time get the whole village agog about the care of their spotless town, and at last, the thought will rise to the surface that said neighbor must do something about the abuse of neighborliness he has committed in leaving his barnyard untended for so long a time. The club of girls could take for its motto, "No fly in our village"; and no worthier one could be found, at least for a time. Other forms of aspiration might follow. Meantime, perhaps, the baby has died; and this thought may bring it home to us that the keeping of the village clean is a sort of King's Business requiring haste.

It is always a good plan to save red tape by taking advantage of any existing associations that may be made to answer our need. The Country Girl is happy in having several such societies that she may join. Among these may be mentioned the Young Women's Christian Association, the Young Women's Hebrew Association, the Educational Alliance, the Girls' Friendly Society, the King's Daughters, the Sodality of the Children of Mary, the Girls' Athletic League, the Girls' Protective League, the Camp Fire Girls, the Good Templars, and the Grange, a society in which the women have the same privileges as the men and where young and older members meet and work together. The International Congress for Farm Women has a section for young women.

Among all these the one that has the most to give to the young women of the countryside is the Young Women's Christian Association—an association that now includes a glorious company of two hundred and eighty thousand young women. The fundamental thought in their work is "character-contagion"; first the contagion of the character of Christ as an influence in the world; second, the contagion of the character of a Christ-like human being among others. This thought is expressed in their handbook in these words: "With the contagion of Christian character as a definite object the very first ideal of the Association is that every person placed in a position of responsibility for any part of the work shall embody the spirit of Christ."

Flaming with enthusiasm for this ideal, over a hundred national secretaries are carrying on the work among nine hundred local societies in this country, and over thirty are sent to Turkey, Japan, India, China, and South America, that the girls of other lands also may learn to know the good that girls can do for girls.

For this association follows the theory that "every girl needs help, and every girl can give help." The declaration strikes to the bottom of things psychological in girl-life. Girls need each other. No one can help a girl like a girl. If there is any trouble with any girl or with any pair or group of girls, get a girl—the right kind of girl—to come and redirect the group. If new thoughts, new ideals, new enthusiasms embodied in a new girl can be brought in, the old thoughts will disappear themselves. There are trees on which the old leaves hang withered and dead all winter long: the rains cannot rot them away, the winds cannot whip them off. But when in the spring the new life begins to come coursing up the trunk, runs out through the branches, and presses a new end against the root of the dead stem, it yields at last and makes way for the leaf and flower and fruit that imperatively insist upon having more room. Those who wish to redirect young human life may find a practise lesson in this example of nature. To make faulty habits or low ideals or dangerous inclinations disappear, bring in new life. And experience teaches that new life can be imparted in no way more effectively in the field of girl-life than through good noble girl associates. To associate girls under some noble banner that will assure their enthusiasm and loyalty, will therefore be one of the most direct means of lifting their standard of living.

This Association more than any other has taken to heart the problem of the Country Girl. Two of the hand bills of the Association show how they feel about the Country Girl and what she needs and what she may have if she will take the right means.

THE GIRL IN THE COUNTRY

"Where the wide earth yields
Her beauties of fruit and grain."

If the country is to continue to produce not only the food but the hardiest young men and women, and much of the idealism and best leadership of the nation,

Life MUST be made