If there is no college girl to come "back home" to take the lead in forming an Eight Weeks Club, and no other means at hand to carry out a plan for organization in the mind of any young woman in some rural region, the best thing to do is to write—and get as many other girls as you can to write also—to the Y. W. C. A., 600 Lexington Avenue, New York City, and tell them of the desire, and then see what happens. They will be likely to send in good time a State or County Secretary to come and look over the field and give advice. She will probably hold a conference with the leading people of the county, calling together the pastors and their wives, teachers, bankers, alumnæ, and others interested. There will be parlor conferences, speeches and addresses, and personal interviews. Giving of the necessary funds will surely follow all this education of the mind of the community, and a place will be chosen or built for the home of the new association.
Whatever institutions already exist in the community, either social or religious, the Y. W. C. A. will not retard them but will give them aid and new inspiration. By the elastic articulation of its secretaries and departments, the Young Women's Christian Association cooperates with many organizations: with the church in training leaders for Bible study courses and teachers for Sunday Schools, in directing social life, and in encouraging federation and unity among denominations; with the school, by athletic leagues, field days, play festivals, contests in public speaking and choral singing; with teachers and farmers' institutes, Chautauquas, and the Grange, giving programs for girls and women; with agricultural extension courses, adapting them to the needs of girls; with State and County fairs, providing exhibits, contests, camps, rest rooms; with library commissions, making out reading lists and using traveling libraries.
There is not an organization for betterment beside which the Young Women's Christian Association will not stand, taking from it whatever it can use for the welfare of young women and girls, and putting its own spiritual meaning into the endeavor.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE CAMP FIRE
RUTH THE TOILER
There is that quiet in her face
That comes to all who toil.
She moves through all the sheaves with grace
A daughter of the soil.
There is that beauty in her hands,
That glory in her hair,
That adds a warmth to sun-brown lands
When Autumn cools the air.
There is that gladness in her eyes,
As one who finds the dust
A lovely path to Paradise,
And common things august
There is that reverence in her mood,
That patience sweet and broad,
As one who in the solitude
Yet walks the fields with God!
—Edward Wilbur Mason.