rs of the home; but as a
chain will break if one link fails, so the farmstead will be ruined if
it lacks the cooperation of the daughter. She has, at least, a function
all her own; and the happiness that comes through normal growth must be
hers in order that she may fulfil her mission. The farmstead girl must
take her place in the farmstead or the farmstead unit will lack one of
its component parts and fall to pieces. It is her patriotic duty; it is
her home and family duty; and it is her greatest happiness. The young
woman on the farm must grow up with the idea that she is essential to
the progress of country life and therefore of the national life, and
that a career is before her just as much as if she were aiming to be an
artist or a writer or a missionary. This purpose makes her life worth
while. She must conserve her health for this; she must develop her
powers for this; she must train herself heroically for this.

We are, then, face to face with the question, so important to us at the
present moment, whether the daughter in the farmstead family is having
her own full meed of happiness in her farm home or not. Has she the
opportunity that is her right to grow and develop all her latent powers
and to become the person that by all the gifts of nature she is capable
of becoming?

CHAPTER III

IS THE COUNTRY GIRL HAPPY ON THE FARM?

Let the mighty and great
Roll in splendor and state!
I envy them not, I declare it.
I eat my own lamb,
My own chicken and ham,
I shear my own sheep and I wear it.

I have lawns, I have bowers,
I have fruits, I have flowers.
My lark is my morning's charmer;
So you jolly dogs now
Here's God bless the plow--
Long life and content to the farmer.

_Inscription on an old English pitcher._

CHAPTER III

IS THE COUNTRY GIRL HAPPY ON THE FARM?

The young women who read this book will surely believe that no mere
curiosity inspires the question at the head of this chapter, but a fully
fixed idea that much depends on the answer. If it is not to be possible
for the young women to be made happy in the rural environment, they
surely are going to turn in great numbers and follow the beckoning
finger of industries and engagements townward. And if multitudes of them
do this, it will be increasingly difficult to keep that composite thing,
the farmstead, in perfect balance; and in that balance the daughters
have every year a more important part. Their