e and community that no one can possibly be lured
away. In this reorganization of community life, as we have seen, the
Country Girl has a great share and duty. And one of the greatest
services she can perform will be to cherish in her own heart the highest
ideals as to the right and necessary construction of a home in the
character of the parents, and to hold everybody on whom she has any
influence in the community to those ideals as strictly as she possibly
can. For it would be indeed far better for her and for her part in the
onflowing life stream of racial progress if she should dwell unmarried,
run her own farm, and fill her house with the laughter of some
unmothered and unfathered children who would no doubt repay her with
love and service and honor as devotedly as if they had been children of
her very own, as if she should unite in a family plan that by carrying
on impure or diseased influences would contribute to the degradation of
the race, and increase the misery of the world.

Though hampered with some disabilities, the Country Girl of to-day has
one great advantage. She was born after the time when it was settled
conclusively that there was nothing in her sex alone that ought to
hinder her mental growth and her opportunity for activity. In her time
woman has come to realize that when she believes in her own inferiority,
in the possibility that her sex may be a handicap, her nature will be
restricted, and she will not be able to develop the powers she does
possess. She sees that the obsession of this thought has tied down the
woman in the past and has impeded her development. She is now wakened
from this daze.

What barrier can there be to a woman's progress? Truly life presents
many. For instance, her idea of what would for her be progress, may not
be the right idea. There are many stern duties that sometimes seem to
impede progress; duties to parents, to family, or to the social order;
duties to religious forms that have become woven into society and could
not be drawn out without too much sacrifice of what is good and
necessary; duties to common legal form that has dominance and is the
result of centuries of experience, and that could not be taken exception
to without too great risk--these and many other things may form barriers
to the desire of the mere individual. But, these being granted, the
woman can have a free chance for growth and development only when she
believes that nothing coming out of the me