l in
its broad and human sweep, leaving her stunned with the
realization of her pigmied self in the presence of these veritable
facts, and at the same time filling her with a deep, maternal
pride that she, too, is a living, necessary factor in God's world
of Rural Life is the one that possesses the power to rise above
the common drudgeries of daily existence. She knows that the
secret of the beautiful and simple life is to make oneself a
symbol of heavenly life.

--_Sigismund von Eberstadt._

CHAPTER XVIII

FOUNDING A HOME

There is one thing that may not be mentioned by any Country Girls even
in their dearest confidences, but that we may for a surety know: it is
that every one of them looks forward to the making of her own home. Yes;
every one has her dream of a "hope chest"; and as she wanders about her
home community she is looking here and there to see what hillside or
what sightly place on the plain will be the destined location for her
home. Like the wise woman in Proverbs, she, in imagination, buildeth her
house beforehand, and thinks it all out according to the scope of her
ideals.

These ideals that are cherished in the thoughts of the young woman are
her most valuable possessions. They are the blossoming of the best that
she has received from her education, her surroundings in the home, the
advice of her elders, the influence of the books she has read, the music
she has heard and has made, the plays she has seen and the poetry she
has learned. They are the inherited result of long years of experience
on the part of the race; and perhaps in no place is the best that past
centuries have garnered to be found more assimilated and concentrated
than in the country home in America.

In the history of the evolution of society we recall that woman was
assigned no small place. In those early eons of the long slow growth of
society, she was the creator of the home; she was the master of the
mysteries of fire and of household devices; she was the carrier, the
lapidary, the builder, the inventor, the harvester, the tiller of the
soil; she was the weaver, the skin dresser, the maker and mender of
clothing, the hewer of wood and the drawer of water; she was the
linguist and instructor of girls; she was a prophetess and a founder of
religion; she went into battle with the fighting men and she deliberated
in the council of the tribe. She had her full share in the creati