LES AND SWEET ACORNS

I love the taste of thorn apples and sweet acorns and sumac and
choke-cherries and all the wild things we used to find on the road to
school.

And I love the feel of pussy willows and the inside of chestnut burrs.

I love to walk on a country road where only a few double teams have left
a strip of turf in the middle of the track.

And I love the creaking of the sleigh runners and the snapping of
nail-heads in the clapboards on a bitter cold January night.

In the first cool nights I love the sound of the first hard rainfall on
the roof of the gable room.

And I love the smell of the dead leaves in the woods in the fall.

I love the odor of those red apples that grew on the trees that died
before I went back to grandpa's again.

I love the fragrance of the first pink and blue hepaticas which have
hardly any scent at all.

I love the smell of the big summer raindrops on the dusty dry steps of
the school house.

I love the breath of the great corn fields when you ride past them on an
August evening in the dark.

And I love to see the wind blowing over tall grass.

I love the yellow afternoon light that turns all the trees and shrubs to
gold.

I love to see the shadow of a cloud moving over the valley, especially
where the different fields have different colors like a great
checkerboard.

I love the little ford over Turtle Creek where they didn't build the
bridge after the freshet.

I love the sunset on the hill in Winnebago County, where I used to sit
and pray about my mental arithmetic lesson the spring I taught school!

_Elisabeth Wilson._

CHAPTER V

WHAT ONE COUNTRY GIRL DID

It may be interesting to some of the Country Girls who read this book to
see not only some pictures here and there from the life history of girls
but also to look over several more detailed accounts, so that they may
realize more fully what the new era in country life means to a young
woman on the farm who takes hold of her problem with vigor and
enthusiasm. To gratify this desire there will be given in this and the
following chapters, with the kind permission of the writers, a number of
sketches in some detail of the experiences of several girls, who though
they represent widely separated regions of the country, still seem to be
moved by a like impulse toward an advance in efficiency and power of
service.

The first of these accounts expresses the great awakening of southern
woma