ies, darning stockings. Weariness,
the tired-out feeling, come in. There is so much work to be done in
doors and out, and the barn work lasts so late; the evenings are short
and when the work is finished, it is time to retire.

It is rather pathetic to see how many Country Girls will mention the
moment of getting to bed and to sleep as the happiest point in the day.
But then--no one has yet said that she was too tired to sleep--and that,
we are sure, has happened many and many times to the mothers of yore!
And when the daughter speaks of having been kept from reading by her
demonstration work duties, we certainly hear a note of the new era being
struck. But what farm woman of the old days ever gave "so many other
pleasures," or "too many places to go," as reasons for not reading?
Piano practise, too, and "friends running in" prevent the reading. There
cannot be much isolation in such a farmstead as that!

Many Country Girls insist emphatically that in spite of difficulties
they do read a good deal. Such a girl says that when she has a book the
hour of night draws nigh too soon. Another always reserves a few hours
each week for reading, though sometimes she can not make it every day. A
determined girl declares that she lets nothing interfere with a certain
amount of reading. This sort of testimony reaches a height in one who
says that she reads or studies five hours every day. Yet the girl who
wrote that does most of the housework for a small family and takes care
of a large garden.

A few lament the scarcity of books. They have no opportunity to get
books aside from the few belonging to one's friends; but these are soon
read and re-read. Lack of material is the chief interference with
reading with an uncomplaining but very important minority.

If there does really remain any girl in the country who does not know
that she can get books from the traveling libraries that are maintained
now by almost every State, the glad message should be taken to her at
once. And any girl with a fair share of energy could start a small
library in her village or her community, even as the peripatetic
librarian did in Mr. Bouck White's book, _The Mixing_, who carried the
books about to every house and pressed them upon the family at its very
threshold. In that case the house was the castle of the woman as well as
the man, but the little librarian battered an entrance with her winning
ways. After a while everybody blessed her, and her old