? If this may be so, there will be some comfort for
the housekeeper in the farmstead on a rainy day when the wood from the
pile outdoors is so wet that it will not burn, and the water is cold,
and everybody in the house is cross!

It is not a matter to be treated lightly. Whatever burden there is to be
borne falls more heavily upon the wife than upon the husband in the
farmstead. If the farm is isolated, she is the loneliest person there.
If there is poverty, she has the least to use or to spend. If there is
lack of labor-saving devices, she has far fewer than the farmer has. If
life there is monotonous, hers is the victim of the greatest sameness,
the unending changelessness of three meals a day through planting and
harvesting, through week days and Sundays, year in and year out.

Professor Fiske, author of _The Challenge of the Country_, takes a large
view when he touches this phase of the subject. "The annual conquest of
farm difficulties," he says, "makes splendid fighting. There are plenty
of natural enemies which must be fought to keep a man's fighting-edge
keen and to keep him physically and mentally alert. What with the weeds
and the weather, the cut-worms, the gypsy, and the coddling moths, the
lice, the maggots, the caterpillars, the San Jose scale, and the scurvy,
the blight and the gouger, the peach yellows and the deadly curculio,
the man behind the bug gun and the sprayer finds plenty of exercise for
ingenuity and a royal chance to fight the good fight. Effeminacy is not
a farm trait. Country life is great for making men; men of robust health
and mental resources well tested by difficulty, men of the open air and
the skyward outlook. Country dwellers may well be thankful for the
challenge of the difficult. It tends to keep rural life strong."

This was written from the standpoint of the farmer himself and his
business. A like account and with quite as much zoology in it could be
made for the women that share his problems. Life under farming
conditions is as likely to provide opportunity to develop character in
the women folks as in the men; and the daughter in the house may receive
some of the benefits of this developing discipline.

To have a joyous share in a useful work is one of the most satisfying
things in the world. In such a joy as this, the daughter in the
farmstead is, within the bounds of her working capacity, invited to
partake. She may have the inspiration of work, the exhilaration of
strug