fireside--and, by the way, there was a literal as well as a spiritual
fireside for the children to be merry about! Then, too, there was
hospitality, the Thanksgiving dinner, the Christmas home-coming for all
the cousins! In those days life was worth living and there was no
country life problem.

We must look forward to larger families. The next row of fathers and
mothers must live for this, plan for it, trust for it, and educate
themselves for it; for only thus will the farmstead be at once a place
where rafters shall ring with jollity, and the complex life offer dramas
enough to be interesting. In this way we shall save the country.

The story of the home life of the Beecher family, a typical large family
of old New England days, touches a high-water mark of vivid home life.
There was a perfect furor of intellectual excitement going through the
house all the time. Every topic of public interest was brought to the
home circle. Books were read aloud continually. Excitement of all kinds
was going on in the evenings, discussions of all sorts at the table.
The children were not invited, they were required, to argue. If they did
not do it cleverly the father would confound them with ridicule, or he
would say: "Now present this argument and you will be able to down me."
And then he would tell them just how to manage the point in order to
show up the fallacy and gain the right conclusion. So the wise father
trained their minds in a sort of play.

People have talked a great deal about the value to a child of a noble
mother; let a word or two be said for the value of the father in the
training of the home. It should be thought of both after the home is
established and before. Young women should think of this in making the
choice of a partner and the young men should know that they are doing
so. In fact, this may be actually happening already. Two little boys
were talking in the playground not long ago, and one said to the other:
"You mustn't do that, for if you do, you are not training for
parentage." The new era has certainly begun!

But there is a still larger view. The Country Girl should also consider
what she is now doing for the community to make it one in which her sons
and daughters shall, twenty years hence, have a chance for clean,
wholesome and inspiring lives. If she now forms a society for the girls
in her village so that the strength of each individual girl will be
multiplied by the braiding together of their ef