forts, to the end that
better social enjoyments and more intellectual and more ethical ideals
may become habitual, it may be that the years filled with these high
activities will result in a state of things in that community that will
make higher things the rule and lower things impossible. Then her
village will be a safer place for her children when they come than it
could have been without her own girlish endeavors.

The country child starts out with a better physical development than the
city child. Our countryside from the Atlantic to the Pacific is full of
children who are especially endowed for the highest attainments. May not
the Country Girl of the next generation be expected to do something
adequate and wonderful with these good gifts of heaven?

CHAPTER XIX

THE FARM PARTNER

Efficient housekeeping is the beginning of good citizenship.

--_Professor Martha van Rensselaer._

CHAPTER XIX

THE FARM PARTNER

The Country Girl of to-day may look forward to a life in which she shall
serve in a double capacity. She is to be a farm-woman and she is to be
also a wife-mother. The farm woman may do what she can in the work of
the farmstead, but her occupations there must be in abeyance before the
vastly greater importance of the work which is specially hers--the
conserving of the best and highest interests of the family. She is,
first, the head and link of the family. If after she has finished her
contribution to the work of discipline, education, inspiration, reading
and story-telling, spiritual and esthetic guidance, mending and making,
and placing food thrice on the table daily; after she has supplied her
own needs in self-education and self-inspiration, in recreation and
social satisfaction, so that she may come to the tasks mentioned above
with spiritual and mental energy and alertness; and if then she still
has time, strength, patience, will, energy and taste, left for still
greater demands upon her resources; then she may help in the things that
concern the farm business. She may do whatever will be a joy to her to
do, whatever she can do buoyantly and with enthusiasm.

No doubt in the new era this will be possible. But the woman of the next
generation is going to insist upon being happy, and her happiness is to
consist in maintaining efficient working power and in having her work
appreciated. Her work in the home must be thought of as having the same
value as any other earning wor