ery sleep
of the dead the whole night long, and is she all day the widest awake
being that can be found for miles around? Has she an appetite to startle
one fully three times a day and even more often, if something good to
eat is being made? In fine, is she receiving her share of possible
growth? Is she having her chance to show all that she is able to become?
And thus is she being happy? And also thus is she making the rest of the
circle in the home that is at the center of the farmstead, happier than
it could ever have been if she had not been there and had not been the
fully developed girl that she is?

This is the question that seems most important at just this time. This
is the problem on which light must be thrown.

It seems to be an important question for several reasons. It is said
that the young men are showing their dissatisfaction with farm life by
going away in large numbers to find occupation in the city; that the
best and most energetic of the young men, those who would have been
leaders for betterment in the general countryside, are found among those
who desert the countryside, and that thus the farm community is depleted
and deprived of good elements that it cannot well spare. The wind of
destiny for woman that has swept through the country and the world
during the last two decades or so, has penetrated the valleys where in
seclusion the Country Girls have grown up, and has now whispered
inspiration and courage into their ears, so that if they are
dissatisfied with the conditions of their lives they will have the
daring to go forth also, following their brothers, and to take up some
industrial fortune in the city whither the bright star of independence
beckons them. They are doing this already; and the news of it should
make thoughtful people bestir themselves. There seems to be a great
problem here, and the Country Girl seems to be at the heart of it. For
if the rural question is the central question of the world, and if the
social problem is the heart of the rural problem, and if the failure of
the daughter's joy and usefulness threatens the farmstead,--then once
more in the history of the world has the hour struck for woman; then
does the welfare of the world depend upon her as much as did the life of
the bleak New England shore depend on the health and survival of the
Pilgrim Mothers?

Of course no one would wish to claim that the young woman in the
farmstead is of more importance than other membe