The American Country Girl

by Martha Foote Crow

Her share in the work on the farm and in the home consists of a good part of the cooking, cleaning, canning and gardening, but it is not too much for her. They have many household conveniences: running water in a barrel, a blue flame oil stove, a bread-mixer, and a carpet-sweeper. She would like a kitchen cabinet, electric lights, a furnace, a vacuum cleaner run by electricity, and a system of plumbing. But these, in that thickly populated region, will doubtless come in the near future.

In the summer her regular work is the care of the garden, and bringing in the vegetables. When they have no hired girl, she washes all the dishes, fills the lamps and the wood-box, and does most of the sweeping and cleaning. She does a great deal of sewing and is occupied with everything from upholstering chairs to making posters for lectures and plays. During the canning season she cans string beans, corn, swiss chard, spinach, beets, carrots, pears, plums, cherries, berries, etc., and makes astrachan jelly enough to supply the church suppers for the whole year. She seldom has a chance to sit down unless it be to prepare the vegetables for dinner. Her afternoons are taken up with club work, or with other outside activities, with time for an occasional walk with her mother, or an informal call. Evenings there is either choir practise, Christian Endeavor meetings, Grange, church suppers, Club work, or plays, with business letters and sewing to fill up whatever time remains.

Yet room is made for a little music. There is a piano in the home and they sometimes have hymns and old standard songs in the evening. When sewing is to be done, some one always reads aloud. The house is well supplied with books. There are most of the standard books though few novels and little light reading. The newspapers and magazines are read aloud evenings. The table is well supplied with periodicals: they take the Outlook, the Independent, the Geographic Magazine, the Atlantic, the New York Times, the Hampshire Gazette. For herself alone she takes Wohelo, the Camp Fire magazine, and if she should add another it would be the Survey. That would help her most, as her reading at present is along the lines of sociology. To be sure, her reading is somewhat interfered with by housework, sewing, and occupation with outside interests. Besides she has too much physical vitality to sit still long. But if she does need more books than her own house supplies, there is a public library a quarter of a mile away. She is a trustee of this library and goes there twice a week. She helps the librarian catalog the new books, obtains loan agricultural library books, exchanges books with other towns, and obtains agricultural bulletins,—thus making herself an invaluable helper to the whole region. She sees to it that the library gives help to those that are interested in nature study. She herself has an interest in birds and wild flowers. In her home they have a stuffed collection of fifty or more species of birds. She modestly says that she "knows ferns somewhat." Thanks to her ministrations the town library has books on all those subjects. The chief sources of culture in the village, she says, are the library, the Grange, the stereopticon lectures, and a good pastor.

In order that she may do her full share in helping to promote the general welfare, she has become Guardian of a Camp Fire Club and in that group does all she can to encourage efficiency among the girls. She takes a vital interest in all the organizations for young people. There cannot be a girl in that region who does not know that if she wants any good thing this older girl stands ready to help her. She is herself a Unitarian but she has no sectarian prejudice against working in the Christian Endeavor Society and she shows this by taking part in the meetings every Sunday evening. She owns the only stereopticon in town and generously sees to getting the slides for the monthly lectures. She sings in the church choir. She keeps more or less in touch with the school superintendent who is very responsive to suggestions and she tries to help him and the five district school teachers in every way she can. She is medical temperance superintendent in the Women's Christian Temperance Union. In this connection she puts up posters and prepares charts for the school children. She is Guardian not only for the Camp Fire Girls but also for the Bluebirds, which is organized for the girls under twelve.

As to earning money, she is so happy as not to have to work for that at present. However, "on the place," she says, "I think I could earn by making jelly, if I could find a market. In the past, when we were living elsewhere, I was given seventy-five dollars a month to pay my share of the housekeeping accounts (which I ran) and to lay aside. Now on the farm, I do not have any set sum, but I own a share in the farm."

Asked if this sharing in the ownership made her more enthusiastic for the success of the farm, she answered that she thought it did. She would like to know of more ways of earning money that she might recommend them to her Camp Fire Girls. She has had no special education for farming as a business or for home-making; but she follows the suggestions of an agricultural teacher in a high school in the next town, and she reads up on various lines of home work in connection with the judging of the work of the girls in the Camp Fire, and she has taken two courses at a college in household chemistry.

A life of such incessant activity must have a great deal of joy in it. There are, however, some special forms of recreation accessible to her. There is a Fourth of July celebration with floats and a parade; there are athletic contests; there is baseball, and there is an entertainment consisting of a play, and other exercises. There are occasional school picnics, and plays are given by the Grange or by the Camp Fire Girls. Sunday evening stereopticon lectures are run by the Christian Endeavor Society. She attends the baseball games, the W. C. T. U. parties; the Cradle Roll parties, the Camp Fire parties, and the Bluebird parties for the little club girls.

Social life centers about Church and Grange. There are enough girls to have societies of their own and though they live widely apart, it seems that this girl with the spirit of a leader is able to draw them together. Though she is very modest about her part of the attraction, she could doubtless say, if she would, "a great part of it I was!" There are about a dozen young people in about a dozen houses in her village and there is something going on once a week or oftener which is specially for the girls.

There is a great deal more that might be said about this faithful and enthusiastic worker. Her loyal following in the path that first opened before her has led her into a special field of moral education where her efficiency and fine spirit are making her useful not only to her own region but to a much wider circle. She has been trained for a service which it is a joy to render.

The second record in this group represents the great bounding life of the Northwest, and is as full of the new elixir of country life as the other accounts given.