tions have not caused her absolute break-down.
But--she has run away! Otherwise she probably would never have gained
the development that gave her a voice to speak out for herself as she
has spoken in this letter.

More laconic, and yet expressive of a more deadly blight, was the letter
from a girl of fifteen in another State. This girl lives on a prosperous
seventy-five acre farm, three miles from a good-sized town. There is a
public library in that town but she never uses it: and there is no home
library to give her any aid. There are no contests, no prizes that are
accessible to her to awaken her ambition; and there is no association or
society of any kind for girls in her vicinity. There is no music in her
family, no games are played, and no magazines are taken; she has no
share in any part of the farm business except to work tirelessly as
directed; nothing on the farm can she call her own; and no sum of money
is set apart for her use. She has no enjoyments, no encouragement; she
is hard at work all the time. She neither knows why any one should find
the farm attractive nor why one should desire to leave it. Time and
interest for her have ceased.

It is news from such a girl as this that most startles us. But such a
Country Girl exists, hushed, unexpressive, unresponsive, undeveloped.
She is the blind gentian in the country garden. Are there many of these?
Who can tell? If diligent search is made for them they are found upon
the most remote farms where no newspapers ever penetrate, where the
roads are bad and the neighbors are far away or are beyond forbidding
hills, where the deadly round of dishwashing or the weight of work too
heavy for the years of the girl are exhausting her strength, stifling
her exuberance, and deadening all the power of expression she may have
been capable of having. The least fortunate girl is the one that has her
power to express developed to the least extent; she does not now know
her own wants; but yet when told she too will begin to live and to do
her lovely part in the rooms of life.

One of the group who has thus begun at last to live voices a part at
least of the inwardness of the reason why the young women and young men
of to-day will not be satisfied with the ways of their farming
ancestors. She says: "There exist on many farms conditions which make
life there almost unbearable, to young people particularly. One of them
is lack of congenial companionship; which may be due to lack