| At the Foot of the Rainbow |
| Promised Land |
| Friar Tuck |
| Treasure Island |
| King of the Golden River |
| Water Babies |
| The Crisis |
| The Varmint |
| Set of Kipling |
| Set of W. Irving |
She includes also Riley, E. B. Browning, Wordsworth, Burns.
One writer who lives sixty miles from any kind of library is so fortunate as to have all of Dickens, Scott, Shakespeare, and a copy of Longfellow, Tennyson and Browning. "I have," she says, "a great many miscellaneous books, The Promised Land, Laddie, A Girl of the Limberlost, The Friendly Road, and books of that kind. The first three authors are my favorites; but the Bible and Longfellow are the most comfort and enjoyment."
On the whole there are comparatively few to complain, as one did, that the Bible and a paper now and then compose their entire means of outlook into the world of literature; or as this one said: "When I was at home my only book that was my own property was the Bible." Fortunately this young girl had thus a compendium of all literature, and she is coming out all right.
It also should be a surprise that there should be so few to include a list like this: "Prue and I, some books on the economic status of woman, and a few books on domestic science." But perhaps Country Girls would not think to classify their interest in such studies as these under the heading "reading."
The mothers and daughters, if requested together, would no doubt mention some of the same interferences with the pleasure of reading; but the daughters give some that the mothers would never have thought to state. Work is the great interference for both. The daughters are deterred by housework, sewing, picking blue-berries, darning stockings. Weariness, the tired-out feeling, come in. There is so much work to be done in doors and out, and the barn work lasts so late; the evenings are short and when the work is finished, it is time to retire.
It is rather pathetic to see how many Country Girls will mention the moment of getting to bed and to sleep as the happiest point in the day. But then—no one has yet said that she was too tired to sleep—and that, we are sure, has happened many and many times to the mothers of yore! And when the daughter speaks of having been kept from reading by her demonstration work duties, we certainly hear a note of the new era being struck. But what farm woman of the old days ever gave "so many other pleasures," or "too many places to go," as reasons for not reading? Piano practise, too, and "friends running in" prevent the reading. There cannot be much isolation in such a farmstead as that!
Many Country Girls insist emphatically that in spite of difficulties they do read a good deal. Such a girl says that when she has a book the hour of night draws nigh too soon. Another always reserves a few hours each week for reading, though sometimes she can not make it every day. A determined girl declares that she lets nothing interfere with a certain amount of reading. This sort of testimony reaches a height in one who says that she reads or studies five hours every day. Yet the girl who wrote that does most of the housework for a small family and takes care of a large garden.
A few lament the scarcity of books. They have no opportunity to get books aside from the few belonging to one's friends; but these are soon read and re-read. Lack of material is the chief interference with reading with an uncomplaining but very important minority.
If there does really remain any girl in the country who does not know that she can get books from the traveling libraries that are maintained now by almost every State, the glad message should be taken to her at once. And any girl with a fair share of energy could start a small library in her village or her community, even as the peripatetic librarian did in Mr. Bouck White's book, The Mixing, who carried the books about to every house and pressed them upon the family at its very threshold. In that case the house was the castle of the woman as well as the man, but the little librarian battered an entrance with her winning ways. After a while everybody blessed her, and her old mare and wagon were welcomed along the roads.