, and above all the companionship that
forms a channel for the effectiveness of those good and uplifting
influences. "The County Secretary," says one of their leaflets, "must
not only know country life but student life and city life and industrial
life. She must be an expert in educational, physical, religious and
civic questions and she must be able to lead and to organize so that
clubs and groups may be produced which shall meet needs extending all
the way from athletics and recreation through social and general
community life up to distinctly religious and devotional service. She
must be able to use volunteer leaders and to mold them into a
sympathetic cooperation for the bearing of one another's burdens which
ultimately will lead them to share one another's successes. The County
Young Women's Christian Association ... is bound to come into its
heritage of success and to transform the girlhood of the country and
village life of our land."

If there is no college girl to come "back home" to take the lead in
forming an Eight Weeks Club, and no other means at hand to carry out a
plan for organization in the mind of any young woman in some rural
region, the best thing to do is to write--and get as many other girls as
you can to write also--to the Y. W. C. A., 600 Lexington Avenue, New
York City, and tell them of the desire, and then see what happens. They
will be likely to send in good time a State or County Secretary to come
and look over the field and give advice. She will probably hold a
conference with the leading people of the county, calling together the
pastors and their wives, teachers, bankers, alumnae, and others
interested. There will be parlor conferences, speeches and addresses,
and personal interviews. Giving of the necessary funds will surely
follow all this education of the mind of the community, and a place will
be chosen or built for the home of the new association.

Whatever institutions already exist in the community, either social or
religious, the Y. W. C. A. will not retard them but will give them aid
and new inspiration. By the elastic articulation of its secretaries and
departments, the Young Women's Christian Association cooperates with
many organizations: with the church in training leaders for Bible study
courses and teachers for Sunday Schools, in directing social life, and
in encouraging federation and unity among denominations; with the
school, by athletic leagues, field days, play festiva