but
she will never get to the top of anything. Any success, if by chance it
should come to her, resting on a basis of ill health or indifference to
her physical fitness for living and working, will be like the house
built upon the sands. Before the girl is twenty, before she is
twenty-five--the earlier the better--she should recognize this fact and
begin to establish her life on the bed rock of health.

It is true, too, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, that the country
boy and the country girl are more resourceful than their city cousins.
Out-of-doors they have had to use their wits and have not been spoiled
by all the appliances of city life. Out-of-doors, too, they have made
invaluable friendships with bird and squirrel and rabbit and deer,
friendships whose intelligent wood-life has taught them much.
Self-reliance is one of the lessons of the outdoor runway; and wisdom
and inspiration come from it when they are needed. About this truth the
work of the poet Wordsworth is one long poem. Again and again he writes
of the perfect woman shaped by the influences of nature. Of her he
says:

"Three years she grew in sun and shower;
Then Nature said, 'A lovelier flower
On earth was never sown;
This child I to myself will take;
She shall be mine, and I will make
A lady of my own.

"'Myself will to my darling be
Both law and impulse: and with me
The girl in rock and plain,
In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,
Shall feel an overseeing power
To kindle and restrain.

"'She shall be sportive as the fawn
That wild with glee across the lawn
Or up the mountain springs;
And hers shall be the breathing balm,
And hers the silence and the calm
Of mute, insensate things.

"'The floating clouds their state shall lend
To her; for her the willow bend;
Nor shall she fail to see
Even in the motions of the storm
Grace that shall mould the maiden's form
By silent sympathy.

"'The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her; and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face!'"

No one can afford to neglect all the spiritual influence of nature, and
the only way to receive it is to go to nature. Purity of mind, a clean
conception of God's creative plan, a more active intellectual life are