sit back, apparently saying: "Now, amuse me if
you can! What are you paid for?" The blase city child who comes
sighing out of picture shows is a sad sight. They know everything, and
their little souls are a-weary of this world. It is a cold day for any
child who has nothing left to wonder at.

The desire to play is surely a great stroke of Providence, and one of
which the world has only recently begun to learn. Take the matter of
picnics. I have seen people hold a picnic on the bare prairie, where
the nearest tree was miles away, and the only shade was that of a
barbed-wire fence, but everybody was happy. The success of a picnic
depends upon the mental attitude, not on cool shade or purling streams.

I remember seeing from the train window a party of young people
carrying a boat and picnic baskets, one hot day in July. A little
farther on we passed a tiny lake set in a thick growth of tall grass.
It was a very small lake, indeed. I ran to the rear platform of the
train and watched it as long as I could; I was so afraid some cow would
come along and drink it dry before they got there.

Not long ago I made some investigations as to why boys and girls leave
the farm, and I found in over half the cases the reason given was that
life on the farm was "too slow, too lonely, and no fun." In country
neighborhoods family life means more than it does in the city. The
members of a family are at each other's mercy; and so, if the "father"
always has a grouch, and the "mother" is worried, and tired, and cross,
small wonder that the children try to get away. In the city there is
always the "movie" to go to, and congenial companionship down the
street, and so we mourn the depopulation of our rural neighborhoods.

We all know that the country is the best place in which to bring up
children; that the freckle-faced boy, with bare feet, who hunts up the
cows after school, and has to keep the woodbox full, and has to
remember to shut the henhouse door, is getting a far better education
than the carefree city boy who has everything done for him.

It is a good thing that boys leave the farm and go to the city--I mean
it is a good thing for the city--but it is hard on the farm. Of late
years this question has become very serious and has caused alarm.
Settlements which, ten or fifteen years ago, had many young people and
a well-filled school and well-attended church, with the real owners
living on the farms, have now become de