place under the safest conditions the social life in which the
daughter bears a part. In order that this may be so there is no better
safeguard than that the mother should be in closest confidence with the
daughter, should be present at all the parties, should be in all the
fun. This is the scheme now most approved under the best social auspices
and is adopted in the country wherever they live up to the most refined
models. It means that the mother must never lose the thread of her
daughter's confidence; and if she has done so by the mistake of some
past day, she must leave no stone unturned, by tact and love and prayer,
to regain the lost ground. It means joining in all the games; it means
taking an interest in all the youthful plans. It means adapting her mind
to the youthful mind. It means--but why should I tell mothers what that
means? They know. And the daughters must do their part too in keeping
the confidence-thread between themselves and their mother always perfect
and golden.

When a community is really dead, we may know the fact by the absence of
sociability. The whole country problem hinges chiefly upon this social
matter; and as the woman is the essential upholder of the community the
world over in social affairs, it behooves the young woman in rural life
to prepare for these responsibilities if she will ward off from the farm
and village community a deadly and intolerable inaction.

After all Cousin Artemisia was not in such a parlous state. If those
eager eyes had had no expression in them at all, if the curiosity in
them had long since faded into indifference and a dull unresponsive look
had taken its place, then a just observer might well have had cause for
compassion for that young woman into whose soul the iron of isolation
had gone so deeply that it had hardened and deadened the best part of
her. If a life has been lived through with all its experiences and has
been one long record of unsatisfied longing for the impossible, and if
the end came without ever one break in the cloud that hid away an
imagined world of fulfilment and success, and if during it all there had
been never an instant's let-up from the momently waiting for the sun to
break through, such a life as that has been a success. Not to attain is
not failure. The only failure is to cease trying, to stop aspiring, and
to let the dream and the vision fade away from the face of the
unresponding clouds.

Some one may say, Why then touch her