for the existing scheme of country life does not provide her with a
husband.

Therefore if the home cannot be made happy and the work in the farmhouse
cannot be made interesting, if her fair share of incentive as a human
being in the common round of life cannot be assigned to her, if her
part in the complex structure of the farmstead cannot be put upon an
equitable basis, if the universal happy fortune of woman cannot be seen
to shine as a goal in the long service of the farmstead, why, she will
have none of it!

If this is the irrevocable decision of the farmers' daughters of the
present day, it is a very serious matter. It means that the farmstead
will have to be broken up, that the farm home must go out of existence,
and the whole system of farm life must be revolutionized. What will
happen then, it passes wisdom to prophesy! The Country Girl may well
say, "After me, the deluge!" For if at any one point in the procession
of the generations, the women will stand together and say "Thus far and
no farther!" the procession must stand as still as the pillar of salt
that commemorates the wife of the unfortunate Lot.

Can it be that the Country Girl has in some measure reached this point
by doing what Lot's wife did--by simply looking behind her? Casting her
eye along back over the generations, did she see anything that appalled
her? May it have been something in the experience of her own mother that
lent decision to her mind as she considered what she herself would
choose for a life-path? Or rather, as she looked over the career that
lay nearest to her, the life-struggle that was visible to her in her own
homestead, did she see something that held up before her a warning hand?

There still lives many a farm woman who has to walk down a hill and
carry up from a spring all the drinking and cooking water for her
household and who gets it fresh for every meal. Her round of work may
include all the house work with the washing and ironing, the scrubbing
and cleaning. She sweeps all the rooms up stairs and down every week,
covering all the furniture with sheets to keep off the dust that she
flings into space with her besoms and brooms. She picks the berries for
the table and they may have them three times a day. She gathers all the
vegetables. If she has no cow, she goes for the milk and brings it
home. She is an expert cook, serving the meals in courses, carrying in
and out the dishes, and providing ample quantities of ever