n a camping
trip a person will submit to rigors and privations which he would think
intolerable at home. Whatever is socially fashionable is done with
pleasure; the mind is the great factor. If one is interested in his
work, it is pleasant--indeed more enjoyable than play; but if there is
no interest it is all drudgery and pain. The attitude, the motive, the
will make all the difference in the world. In the rural renaissance,
farm life may become more and more fashionable. This is by no means
impossible. Country life has no such rigors as the football field or the
outing in the wilds. When as a people we have passed from the sensuous
and erotic wave on the crest of which we seem at present to be carried
along, we can with profit, intellectually, morally, socially, and
physically, "go forth under the open sky and list to Nature's
teachings." Everything except the present glare of excitement beckons
back to the land, back to the country. Whether as a people we shall
effectively check the urban trend, will, in the not distant future, test
the self-control, the foresight, the wisdom, and the character of the
manhood and womanhood of this nation.

CHAPTER XV

A GOOD PLACE AFTER ALL

=Not Pessimistic.=--Some of the early chapters of this book may have
left the impression that a restoration, or rejuvenation, of country
life, such as will reverse the urban trend and make rural life the more
attractive by comparison, is difficult if not impossible. It is
difficult we grant; but we do not wish to leave the impression that such
is improbable, much less impossible. We were simply facing the truth on
the dark, or negative, side, and were attempting to give reasons for
conditions and facts which have been everywhere apparent. If there are
two sides to a question both should be presented as they really are. It
is always as useless and as wrong to minimize as it is to exaggerate,
and we were simply accounting for facts.

We did not mean that there is no hope. The first essential in the
solution of any problem or in the improvement of any condition is to get
the condition clearly and accurately in mind--to _conceive_ it exactly
as it is.

There is no doubt that the city, with its material splendor and its
social life, has attractions; but if we turn to rural life, we shall
find, if we go below the surface of human nature, the strongest appeals
to our deeper and more abiding interests. The surface of things and the
present