of personal ties that will be of
enduring value. May not this be still another interest that will bind
the younger members of the village life more closely to the home place
so that they cannot be lured away?

There are pageants that may be enacted by young girls alone when fairies
and sylphs and angels hold the stage and delight the eye with their
many-hued robes and their beautiful movements. The Young Women's
Christian Association has given some altogether delightful masques and
pageants; the Camp Fire Girls have done the same. In their societies,
whatever the kind, Country Girls may undertake some of the plays of
smaller scope but quite as beautiful in their way as those in which the
whole community join, and in this way find their hands filled with
pleasing and recompensing labor.

CHAPTER XXVII

ORGANIZATIONS, ESPECIALLY THE YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION

Raise the stone: thou shalt find me there;
Cleave the wood, and there am I.

--_Logia of Jesus._

CHAPTER XXVII

ORGANIZATIONS, ESPECIALLY THE YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION

In a Memoir that belongs to the classic traditions of our country, that
of David Brainerd the Missionary, we read that he besought the Lord that
he might not be too much pleased and amused with dear friends and
acquaintances one place and another. We have now a new and different
ideal of community feeling; we pray that we may be "pleased and amused
with dear friends and acquaintances," for we realize that only by having
ideas together and working together may we reach the highest ideals not
only for the community but for the individual.

Where isolation becomes really intolerable, the Country Girl cannot be
blamed for taking the first means to relieve herself of its dangers. But
where there is a possibility of making a stagnant place become healthily
busy and interesting, she must be blamed for not making an attempt in
that direction.

An association of the girls alone is always possible if there is even
one more than one to start with. Perhaps others will soon join. The most
unpromising material, if it is human material, can be brought into line
and made something of. But there must be a start.

Now and then we know there is a girl found among the good people of a
village who has thoroughly bad inclinations. Such a one, after the case
is made clear, must be put into the hands of some person of trained
experience and mature judgment. This is not