town and that in the farm home, she will not run away
under a fatal misunderstanding of conditions there?

Moreover the girl of to-day is to be the home-conserver of to-morrow.
Since the woman is the fore-ordained overseer of the whole business of
spending, we may say that her failure to save and to plan and to adapt,
has been the cause of all our trouble. It makes no difference to the
women of the countryside that the women of the cities are more culpable
in these things than are they; their affair is their own, and their duty
is to attain not some one else's ideal, but their own.

The model home-conserver will have the budget for the year put into
shape; she will know all the items of rent, interest on mortgages (if
the family are so unfortunate as to have these troublesome things to
look after), the dates when the fatal inroad has to be made into the
cherished store of savings, the days when the various taxes are due--the
inheritance, county, village, water and other special taxes--and all
other payments that belong in the system of support that the farm or
village home requires. She must know that the thing to be aspired to and
looked forward to is that at the end of the year the financial income
and outgo should accurately balance. The young woman who neglects her
own small account will not be preparing herself for these larger
responsibilities; and she must be able to make this small one balance if
she expects to do the same with the greater one. The comfort of having
it come out right once will be an incentive ever after; and the effect
upon character of compelling one's self to keep steadily to the task of
mental accuracy, of remembering each item and of putting it down quickly
before it has escaped, will be incalculable. It is not a matter of mere
idiosyncrasy that a young girl may say, "Oh, I cannot keep my accounts
and make them come out right--it's too much trouble for just me!" To
have to confess this should be considered a disgrace. One should conceal
the disinclination to this duty, as one should conceal a disinclination
to give one's hair the thorough weekly washing which that passion for
cleanness that is the mark of the true lady calls for. It is impossible
for a young girl of right instincts to say, "Oh, I would just as lief be
an unclean person!" So it should be impossible for the young girl of
right feeling to say, "Oh, I would willingly be a lazy, ineffective and
partly dishonest person in my unde