The sons of the Light, they are down with God in the mire,
God in the manger.

The old-time heroes you honor, whose banners you bear,
The whole world no longer prohibits;
But if you peer into the past you will find them there,
Swinging on gibbets.

So rouse from your perilous ease: to your sword and your shield!
Your ease is the ease of the cattle!
Hark, hark, the bugles are calling! Out, out to some field--
Out to some battle!

--_Edwin Markham._

CHAPTER XXIX

THE COUNTRY GIRL'S DUTY TO THE COUNTRY

Various societies are now trying to supply one of the greatest needs of
the girls in country life: namely, good times. The young life is doing
the most natural thing possible when it demands recreation, and grave
losses must be sustained if satisfaction is not given to this pure and
normal desire.

The countryside itself seems to be painfully, culpably wanting in the
first efforts for the supply of the need for normal, healthful play
times. If public health is valued, if pure morals are desired, if home
comfort is coveted, not to say if there is a wish that the girls and
boys should remain and sustain the rural commonwealth of the future, the
first thing to do to gain these ends would be to answer their
unconscious outcry for more development of the play instinct. A
wonderful woman of our time has written a book about the spirit of youth
in the city street; some one should write one about the spirit of youth
along the country road. We should awake that spirit and set it to
singing on every road and lane, up hill and down dale, all over the
prairies and all along the canyons.

That this is a very vital matter is shown in a letter from a Country
Girl. She wrote:

"There was one thing I did want to ask you about and that was the
need for social recreation, girlish recreation, wholesome,
whole-hearted recreation. Judging by the girls I have taught both
in country and village schools, it has seemed to me that they need
to be taught to be girls, real girls, more than anything else, and
to cherish that girlhood. There exists such a false relation
between the girls and the boys. They are little stagy grown-ups
playing at life, when they should be natural, wholesome children.
I have wondered whether, if their social entertainments were
different, and, if the true way could be shown them, they wouldn't
leave the false and the