ll, one week; water-coloring; making beautiful clothes
and fancy work; Rebecca Lodge; Church in town; amateur photography; and
reading, underscored again. It is fascinating to see what a girl like
this will include under the head of "cultural interest."

On the question of earning and using money, she says: "From the time we
were very small we earned all our spending money by being paid for extra
work. I have been absolutely independent, even to buying my clothes,
since I was seventeen years old. I figure that my work more than pays my
board." First among the ways of earning money, she names hoeing corn;
next she mentions teaching school. "I teach school nine months of the
year. Before I began that and ever since, I have earned money. I put
myself through the Normal School. I packed prunes (at four cents an
hour), sold garden truck (twenty-five cents a day, average--did no
peddling), and sewed for others at usual rates." No special sum is set
apart for her use but she has all she earns. In teaching she receives
sixty dollars a month. She has taught for this salary for two years and
with this she has paid two hundred dollars she had borrowed for her
school expenses. She has four hundred dollars remaining. Most of this is
now in interest-bearing notes on farm securities. She adds: "I buy my
clothes, go one-half on board with grandfather on the homestead, and am
beginning a 'hope-box.'" She is to have a share in the corn crop. "When
I am married," she says, "I expect to invest some in cattle for beef."
The vital question as to whether her sharing in this ownership makes her
have more enthusiasm for the success of the farm, receives this answer:
"Certainly; you should have seen me top the corn when it got frosted
June 6. It's doing fine now; I think we saved it, for it was frozen to
the ground." She has read all on the subject of farming that she could
find. She took some work in the Normal School--enough, she says, to make
her realize that she knew very little; she believes she could do much
through correspondence. Her interest is now about equally divided
between farming and home economics: but, she is good enough to confide,
"I expect to make home-making predominate some day." Ah, then this is
the true meaning of that "hope-box"! This efficient girl is to be a
farmer's wife and she wishes to know how to do her part in helping run a
grain-haystock ranch of a thousand acres successfully. So she has taken
one year at the Nor