if the
Country Girl herself should say, "I see my opportunity and I will arise
and fulfil my mission."

The book will reach its aim, too, if another thing should happen. This
is the first book about the Country Girl. There have been tons of paper
devoted to the farmer; reams filled on the farm woman; not a line for
the girl. May this first book be followed by many, correcting its
misconceptions, rectifying its mistakes, directing its enthusiasms into
the best channels for the welfare of the six and three-quarters
millions of Country Girls of this land! By that time there will be seven
millions--unless in fact these six millions shall have run away to build
their homes and rear their children in the hot, stuffy, unsocialized
atmosphere of the town, leaving the happy gardens without the joyous
voices of children, the fields without sturdy boys to work them, the
farm homes without capable young women to--shall I say, to _man_ them?
No, let us say to _woman_ them, to _lady_ them, to _mother_ them, and so
to make them centers of wholesome interesting life that, if the girls do
their part, shall be the very heart and fiber of the nation.

The author is sorry that she cannot write to all the Country Girls who
have written her either through the questionnaire or through other means
of communication in the groups with which she has been so happily
associated; but she wishes that every Country Girl who reads this book
would write to her (using the address below) and tell her where she
thinks the book has spoken truly and where mistakenly. She trusts the
judgment of the Country Girls of America absolutely, if they can but be
induced to speak in unison and after careful thought.

MARTHA FOOTE CROW.
Tuckahoe, New York City
August, 1915.

CHAPTER I

THE COUNTRY GIRL--WHERE IS SHE?

Woman will bless and brighten every place she enters, and she will
enter every place on this round earth.

_Frances E. Willard._

_O Woman, what is the thing you do, and what is the thing you cry?_
_Is your house not warm and enclosed from harm, that you thrust the
curtain by?_
_And have we not toiled to build for you a peace from the winds
outside,_
_That you seek to know how the battles go and ride where the fighters
ride?_

You have taken my spindle away from me, you have taken away my loom;
You bid me sit in the dust of it, at peace without cloth or broom;
You have shut me stil