he need there, should put her shoulder to the
wheel to make a moral uplift for the whole region! The young woman that
will accept this high education and then neglect such opportunities for
social service has not gained the chief thing--the socialized spirit,
the spirit of social responsibility for the world; no, nor even for the
very town for which she ought to be first to feel it. Surely she could
ask for no better or larger career than to be able to make in her home
town a radiant life for all the young people, full of charm, a
counter-charm against which the lure of the city would have no power,
and thus keep girl life safe and pure, and prevent the sorrowful fate
that would befall her young townswomen if they should yield to the
temptation that knocks at their door.

The seriousness of the situation for those unprotected from such dangers
can scarcely be exaggerated. While the number of native-born American
Country Girls that deliberately choose a low or vicious life is, in the
opinion of experts, comparatively small, still it is not to be tolerated
that any country or village girls should lack safeguarding.

Happily this is the story of an exceptional incident; but how may it be
prevented from becoming common? By making the life about the country
home interesting in the work and in the play; by building up a complex
social structure in every village with music and pageantry, with clubs
and societies, with vigorous religious influence and activity, with
traveling library and magazine exchange. Not one of the possible means
for intellectual and social interchange, however joyous, but is
justified in its philanthropic aim. The farm home, the country village
_must_ be made a happy place for the young folks. It must never for one
instant be dull.

To preach this ideal no one can be so useful as the girls themselves.
Natural hostesses and social leaders, they are adapted to create
wholesome good times in the community. But may we not expect even more?
If among the girls of the village there is one who has been away to
college and has seen anything of the outside world, ought she not to use
her influence among the girls of the village to show them what the real
danger is likely to be to one who goes unprepared by industrial and
social training to cope with the situation in the city? Ought she not to
consider herself to a great degree responsible if any girl from her
village or her country community does go away unequip