ow during late
centuries. But it must not be so any longer. Too much depends upon
orderliness in finances, for the Country Girl to neglect this means of
becoming efficient in her life-work.

All of these card-catalog and other "devices" are a part of a great
movement to put efficiency into every human industry. And this movement,
again, is a part of the upward striving of mankind. The "industry" that
is to be the life-work of the Country Girl must not be behind.

It is claimed that the average farmer puts more thought into his work
than the average woman in a farm home puts into hers. This is partly
because the seasons make less change in her work than they do in his.
But they do make a very great change in her work; and the difference
between her work and his in this respect ought not to make the great
difference that exists between the amount of foresight he shows in his
planning and the dim irresolute bungling that is so often the
characteristic of hers. We cannot say that we have an ideal unless we
contrive a plan to express that ideal. Something luminous and startling
may glow before our eyes and flatter our self-conceit with a hope that
seems like a resolution. But without a definite plan, the glow soon
vanishes and we are no better for having had it. In fact we are worse.
It is a real injury to our soul development to entertain an unfounded
ideal and then allow it to fade away before we concentrate it into
purpose; for we have deceived ourselves and we have weakened our will.

Now and then we read of some woman of olden time who thought out her
plan for the next day after she went to bed at night. She was a
prophecy of the present; or rather, of the time to come. Too much cannot
be said to the young women of to-day about the necessity of foresight.
Foresight is the great bulwark of efficiency. Hurry, they say, is only
poor planning; and we know what depredations hurry is making upon our
fields of life. The Country Girl, if she wishes to help in the
upbuilding of national character, must drive hurry from her field, and
this she can do by efficient planning. She must now adopt the systematic
spirit in order that when she has a farm home upon her hands she will be
ready for the simplification that alone will make her work under the new
complications endurable and easy. It will be necessary for her to reduce
all to a definite scheme. She must then plan her work by seasons; she
must plan it by days, and by hours in