in
so much of sympathetic understanding by persistent visiting that I
have found it worth while to disregard my reluctance.

So often we hear mothers say, "I try to visit school at least once
each year." I wonder if they ever think of that one visit as an
injustice to the teacher? Suppose that, as is quite probable, the
visitor arrives at an inopportune moment, finding the children in the
midst of work which won't "show off," or the air heavy with the
echoes of a disciplinary encounter, or the children restless as the
session draws to a close, or dull and listless from the heat of an
unusually hot day. What the visitor needs to do is not to visit once a
year, but to get acquainted with the school as she does with her
next-door neighbor or her mother-in-law. Having done this, she may
attend the meetings of the parent-teacher association with a
consciousness of knowing something of the problems to be met and
solved. Until she has formed such acquaintance she deals with unknown
quantities and is therefore in danger of erroneous conclusions.

[Illustration: Mothers visiting a school garden. Mothers need to
visit the schools often in order to know something of the problems to
be met and solved by the teachers]

It is interesting to see how completely both teacher and pupils take
to their hearts the mother who really does get acquainted them. How
easy it is to appeal to her for advice and help; and what a sense of
familiar ownership she comes to have in the school. It is no longer
merely "what my child is learning" or whether "my children are getting
what they ought to get in school," but rather "what _we_ are doing in
our school."

The activities of women in the church usually follow along well-worn
paths. The women help as they have always helped by their attendance
at service, by their ladies' aid society or guild, by their missionary
society, and by their aid to the poor of the town. Many struggling
churches depend almost solely upon their women's work for support.
That the woman whose problems we are studying should enter upon her
church duties armed with wisdom is quite as necessary as that she
should be earnest and enthusiastic. The church is not primarily a
neighborhood social center. It is first of all a means for spiritual
uplift. It must not, in a multiplicity of humanitarian activities,
lose its character of spiritual guide. Its women will therefore be
animated by a spiritual conception of the church and will