s
song, its social gatherings, its clubs, and its teams. How you would
have pricked up your ears if you had driven past the Hawley School and
heard a score of lusty voices shouting the school song to the tune of
"Everybody's Doing It!"

December was the time of the Page County contests, when each school sent
its exhibits of dressmaking, cooking, rope-splicing, barn-planning,
essay-writing and its corn-judging teams to the county seat, where they
were displayed and judged very much as they would be at a county fair.
Further, it was the time when the prizes were to be awarded to the boy
having the best acre of alfalfa, of corn and of potatoes. (Queer, isn't
it, but last year a girl got the first prize for the best crop of
potatoes.) December is a great month in Page County. This year more than
three thousand exhibits were sent into Clarinda, the county seat. Every
boy and girl is on tip-toe with expectancy, and after the awards the
successful schools are as proud as turkey cocks.

"We have never taken the thing seriously here before," explained a
farmer who had left his work in mid-afternoon and come in to teach the
boys of a school how to judge seed corn. "This year we're going down
there to Clarinda for all that's in it." If he hadn't meant what he said
he would scarcely have been spending his hours in the school-room. If
the Hawleyville boys had not been thoroughly in earnest they would not
have been there, after school, learning how to judge corn.

The community around each school is agog with excitement while
preparations are being made for the county contest. The men folk advise
the boys regarding their corn-judging and their models of farm
implements and farm buildings, while the women give lessons galore in
the mysteries of country cooking, for it is no small matter to be hailed
and crowned as the best fourteen-year-old cook in Page County, Iowa.

One Page County teacher conducts her domestic science work in the
evening at the homes of the girls. On a given day of each week the
entire class visits the home of one of the girls, prepares, cooks and
eats a meal. What an opportunity to inculcate lessons in domestic
economy at first hand! What a chance to show the behind-the-time
housekeeper (for there are such even in Page County) how things are
being done!

Because Page County is a great corn county much school time is devoted
to corn. In every school hangs a string of seed corn which is brought in
by the boys