y of our girls draw prizes in the shape of
good farmers and prosperous young merchants. But their heads aren't
turned by it. They come around in their new automobiles and take us out
riding, just as if we had money too. The wife of our mayor used to work
for us, and when the electric light gang stuck a light where it would
shine straight into our back porch, thus reducing the value of our house
105 per cent. as a place of employment for a nice, attractive girl in
summers, I stepped over to the mayor's office and asked him if he
remembered how he used to sit on that porch himself. He smiled once,
winked twice, and three minutes afterward four men were on their way to
relocate that pole.

If I have any criticism of the hired girls in our town, it is because
they go to Europe too much. Now, of course, it's no worse for a hired
girl to go to Europe for the summer than it is for any one else to
indulge themselves in that way. But that's the irritating part. Nobody
else goes. Outside of Mrs. Wert Payley and one or two school teachers, I
don't suppose any Homeburg people have crossed the Atlantic. But half a
dozen of our hired girls go every year. They leave late in the spring,
and during the hot weary summer their mistresses toil patiently along
keeping the job open if they can't find a substitute who will work for a
few months, for the girls who go to Europe are usually pearls of great
price and must be gotten back at all cost. I don't suppose anything is
harder on the temper than to work over a hot kitchen stove all day in
July, and then to sit down to supper, a damp and wilted mess of
weariness, and read a souvenir card from your hired girl, said card
depicting a cool and inviting Swedish meadow with snow-topped mountains
in the distance.

Our girl has been to Europe three times. She has crossed on the
_Mauretania_, the old _Deutschland_ and the new _Olympic_. Two years
from this summer she thinks she will try the _Imperator_. Often in the
evening she tells us of the wonders of these great vessels--of the
beauty of the sunset at sea, and of the smoke and noise and majesty of
London. I suppose it indicates a jealous disposition, but it makes me
mad sometimes to think that it takes practically all the money I can
earn, working steadily and with two weeks off per year, to send that
girl abroad.

Of course I don't mean it just that way. She doesn't get all of it. In
fact she gets three dollars a week of it. Out of this she