l with a sleepy will, with nor evil nor good
to do,
While our house the World that we keep for God should be garnished and
swept anew.

The evil things that have waxed and grown while I sat with my white
hands still,
They have meshed our world till they twined and curled through my very
window sill;
Shall I sit and smile at my ease the while that my house is wrongly
kept?
It is mine to see that the house of me is straightened and cleansed
and swept!

_Margaret Widdemer._

CHAPTER I

THE COUNTRY GIRL--WHERE IS SHE?

The clarion of the country life movement has by this time been blown
with such loudness and insistence that no hearing ear in our land can
have escaped its announcement. The distant echoes of brutal warfare have
not drowned it: above all possible rude and cruel sounds this peaceful
piping still makes itself heard.

It has reached the ears of the farmer and has stirred his mind and heart
to look his problems in the face, to realize their gigantic
implications, and to shoulder the responsibility of their solution. It
has penetrated to the thoughts of teachers and educators everywhere and
awakened them to the necessities of the minute, so that they have
declared that the countryside must have educational schemes adapted to
the needs of the countryside people, and that they must have teachers
whose heads are not in the clouds. It has aroused easy-going preachers
in the midst of their comfortable dreams and has caused here and there
one among them to bestir himself and to make hitherto unheard-of claims
as to what the church might do--if it would--for the betterment of
country life.

And all of these have given hints to philanthropists and reformers, and
these to organizations and societies; these again have suggested
theories and projects to legislators, senators, and presidents; the
snowball has been rolled larger and larger; commissions have sat,
investigations have been made, documents have been attested, reports
handed in, bills drafted and, what is better, passed by courageous
legislation; so that now great schemes are being not only dreamed of but
put into actual fulfilment. Moreover, lecturers have talked and writers
have issued bulletins and books, until there has accumulated a library
of vast proportions on the many phases of duty, activity, and outlook
that may be included under the title, "A Country Life Movement."

In all this stirr