She is not wanting in appreciation of the possibilities in farm life and the farming business; but, to quote with variations, she says to herself:
If they be not fair for me,
What care I how fair they be?
She sees the beauty of the changing seasons, and she enjoys the companionship of animals, naming them one by one after all her favorite heroes and heroines of fairyland; but the fact that she has nor chick nor lambkin for her own is as
The little rift within the lute
That by and by will make the music mute.
The Country Girl takes a pride in her chickens that makes their care a pleasure to her.
If the struggle to pay the mortgage is long and the work heavy, she does not especially enjoy spending days and nights of toil with the rest of the family to accomplish the desired end; but more than all this does she dislike having the father keep all the trouble to himself; she wants a share in the responsibility. She wants some acres of her own, some stock of her own. She wants her personality as a factor in the business, which it really is, to be justly acknowledged. For without that, she reasons, what is there to look forward to? Hope is the anchor of the soul; and without something to hope for, how can one hope? She finds that she has none of these joyous anticipations of the future that every young woman loves and has the right to entertain. She cannot look forward to the natural and normal life of the home for her future lot, for the existing scheme of country life does not provide her with a husband.
Therefore if the home cannot be made happy and the work in the farmhouse cannot be made interesting, if her fair share of incentive as a human being in the common round of life cannot be assigned to her, if her part in the complex structure of the farmstead cannot be put upon an equitable basis, if the universal happy fortune of woman cannot be seen to shine as a goal in the long service of the farmstead, why, she will have none of it!
If this is the irrevocable decision of the farmers' daughters of the present day, it is a very serious matter. It means that the farmstead will have to be broken up, that the farm home must go out of existence, and the whole system of farm life must be revolutionized. What will happen then, it passes wisdom to prophesy! The Country Girl may well say, "After me, the deluge!" For if at any one point in the procession of the generations, the women will stand together and say "Thus far and no farther!" the procession must stand as still as the pillar of salt that commemorates the wife of the unfortunate Lot.