The American Country Girl Part 28

"Burn, fire, burn!

Flicker, flicker, flame!

Whose hand above this flame is lifted Shall be with magic touch engifted, To warm the hearts of lonely mortals Who stand without their open portals.

The torch shall draw them to the fire, Higher, higher, By desire.

Whoso shall stand by this hearthstone, Flame-fanned, Shall never, never stand alone; Whose house is dark and bare and cold, Whose house is cold, This is his own.

Flicker, flicker, flicker, flame; Burn, fire, burn!"

The whole ritual is so poetic that it seems to have touched the young life into creative energy.

The ceremony of receiving a girl into the various honors is altogether beautiful; but we must leave something for a surprise to the young girl who is hoping to become some day a member. It must be remembered, however, that the honors are to be earned. The friend of a member is not begged to join the Camp Fire Girls; she is allowed to join if she will enter into the spirit of the society and make herself worthy. To do that she may have to alter her point of view. If she has been in the habit of thinking of the humble duties of life as a drudgery, she certainly will have to change her mind in that respect. To throw romance and beauty and the spirit of adventure about the common things of life is the avowed object of the a.s.sociation. And these are the common things of life--dish was.h.i.+ng, house cleaning, first aid to the injured, darning stockings and keeping accurate accounts. To view these as adventures, as bits of romance, is what the Camp Fires are aiming toward. And they are succeeding; for there are hundreds of groups of girls all over the country who are struggling to win the beads by study and service, that shall make these prized necklaces represent their endeavors. The mothers are welcoming this spirit that turns a disliked piece of household work into an adventure of high emprise. They find themselves rushed away from a task they were about to begin lest the daughter should fail by chance to gain a bead she was striving for, and prevented from various branches of work by the rules the daughter was following. But it is not the spirit of vanity and self aggrandizement that forms the basis of the girls' endeavor; it is the love of achievement; it is the game!

If one looks over the books of directions for Camp Fire Girls, one is delighted and fascinated by the pictures that show the many ways the girls have to carry out the intention of the society. Here are girls in the ceremonial costumes, the hair braided Indian fas.h.i.+on, the decorated band drawn around the forehead and fastened behind at the back of the head. In one picture the girls are sitting by the tent at camp, sewing and carving and carpentering for honors. Here they are in a big canoe with paddles lifted all together; again they are starting out for a hay-rack ride, or building a gigantic bonfire for Independence Day, setting up the logs in tepee-shape, while eight girls are bearing the next log to the pyramid. We see them wading, swimming, and making fire in antique fas.h.i.+on with bow and drill; they are cooking in house and in camp; they are was.h.i.+ng, they are ironing, they are mending; here they are serving the community by teaching some little girls to sew, or by helping to fight a real forest fire; they are holding ceremonial meetings and conferring honors on those that by hard work have won them.

One can only say: O happy, happy girls in this happiest of countries, that have so much done for them, that have so great opportunities, that are so diligently and joyously making the most of their chance in life!

CHAPTER XXIX

THE COUNTRY GIRL'S DUTY TO THE COUNTRY

Are you sheltered, curled up and content by the world's warm fire, Then I say that your soul is in danger!

The sons of the Light, they are down with G.o.d in the mire, G.o.d in the manger.

The old-time heroes you honor, whose banners you bear, The whole world no longer prohibits; But if you peer into the past you will find them there, Swinging on gibbets.

So rouse from your perilous ease: to your sword and your s.h.i.+eld!

Your ease is the ease of the cattle!

Hark, hark, the bugles are calling! Out, out to some field-- Out to some battle!

--_Edwin Markham._

CHAPTER XXIX

THE COUNTRY GIRL'S DUTY TO THE COUNTRY

Various societies are now trying to supply one of the greatest needs of the girls in country life: namely, good times. The young life is doing the most natural thing possible when it demands recreation, and grave losses must be sustained if satisfaction is not given to this pure and normal desire.

The countryside itself seems to be painfully, culpably wanting in the first efforts for the supply of the need for normal, healthful play times. If public health is valued, if pure morals are desired, if home comfort is coveted, not to say if there is a wish that the girls and boys should remain and sustain the rural commonwealth of the future, the first thing to do to gain these ends would be to answer their unconscious outcry for more development of the play instinct. A wonderful woman of our time has written a book about the spirit of youth in the city street; some one should write one about the spirit of youth along the country road. We should awake that spirit and set it to singing on every road and lane, up hill and down dale, all over the prairies and all along the canyons.

That this is a very vital matter is shown in a letter from a Country Girl. She wrote:

"There was one thing I did want to ask you about and that was the need for social recreation, girlish recreation, wholesome, whole-hearted recreation. Judging by the girls I have taught both in country and village schools, it has seemed to me that they need to be taught to be girls, real girls, more than anything else, and to cherish that girlhood. There exists such a false relation between the girls and the boys. They are little stagy grown-ups playing at life, when they should be natural, wholesome children.

I have wondered whether, if their social entertainments were different, and, if the true way could be shown them, they wouldn't leave the false and the sham, and be natural. Often the play ends in real disaster and young lives full of possibilities go down into the deeps. It is hard to express this in just these few words on paper but if you know country life as it still exists I am sure you will understand."

This wise young woman has here linked the need for recreation and the dire necessity for moral restraint in a way to appeal to every student of country life and to every one that desires the well-being of the boys and girls there.

When the factors in this problem are thus reduced to simple terms, it seems so easy to manage. The little things to do, the appalling disaster to be prevented! More recreation in the village--more girls saved from direst sorrow and downfall! Who would not spring to help? Is not the duty of the girls who are a little older or who have been away to school or college perfectly, translucently clear? Can you fail to see and feel it?

There was a story of lost opportunity unconsciously revealed in the letter of a college girl, who lives in a long valley between mountains where the young people come in great numbers to do the hop-picking. The plan for living included tents and an eating-table in common. There were dances at night and much drunkenness. The writer added a tragic description of what happens under these circ.u.mstances and of the terrible results that follow the orgy.

What is that Country Girl thinking of, that she should waste this opportunity? Why does she not do something for those girls?

What can she do? Organize something! Form some kind of an a.s.sociation.

Get the girls together--but not at just the last moment before the great wave rises above their heads. We must build up beforehand; we must start in at foundations; little by little we must undermine wrong likings and insert slowly in their places better likings. We cannot force the growth of the better things; they must grow naturally. Working thus for days and months and years, we may at last cause a better feeling, a better taste; we may develop greater self-control that will be permanent because based on higher ideals and n.o.bler desires.

The young woman who wrote that letter was educated in an Eastern college and went from there to a farm in the West, finding a home at last in this beautiful valley. Who knows but that her whole life and career was ordained in this wandering way in order that she might come to that special valley and seeing the need there, should put her shoulder to the wheel to make a moral uplift for the whole region! The young woman that will accept this high education and then neglect such opportunities for social service has not gained the chief thing--the socialized spirit, the spirit of social responsibility for the world; no, nor even for the very town for which she ought to be first to feel it. Surely she could ask for no better or larger career than to be able to make in her home town a radiant life for all the young people, full of charm, a counter-charm against which the lure of the city would have no power, and thus keep girl life safe and pure, and prevent the sorrowful fate that would befall her young townswomen if they should yield to the temptation that knocks at their door.

The seriousness of the situation for those unprotected from such dangers can scarcely be exaggerated. While the number of native-born American Country Girls that deliberately choose a low or vicious life is, in the opinion of experts, comparatively small, still it is not to be tolerated that any country or village girls should lack safeguarding.

Happily this is the story of an exceptional incident; but how may it be prevented from becoming common? By making the life about the country home interesting in the work and in the play; by building up a complex social structure in every village with music and pageantry, with clubs and societies, with vigorous religious influence and activity, with traveling library and magazine exchange. Not one of the possible means for intellectual and social interchange, however joyous, but is justified in its philanthropic aim. The farm home, the country village _must_ be made a happy place for the young folks. It must never for one instant be dull.

To preach this ideal no one can be so useful as the girls themselves.

Natural hostesses and social leaders, they are adapted to create wholesome good times in the community. But may we not expect even more?

If among the girls of the village there is one who has been away to college and has seen anything of the outside world, ought she not to use her influence among the girls of the village to show them what the real danger is likely to be to one who goes unprepared by industrial and social training to cope with the situation in the city? Ought she not to consider herself to a great degree responsible if any girl from her village or her country community does go away unequipped into the struggle and becomes lost in the oubliette of vice? Ought not the girls with superior knowledge and better outlook not only to do all in their power to keep the home girl amused and interested in the life of the village, but to see that in each individual case the better wisdom is at hand for her as warning and as deterrent? "I should have known better"

is small comfort afterward. When the wrong is done, and the girl is lost, does the college girl in her home town take it to her own heart as in part her responsibility? Should she not do so?

In case an inexperienced girl should have occasion to go to the city alone, she should learn beforehand what are the proper and fit things to do at railroad stations and in other public places, and what resources she has at hand there in case of difficulty. The Young Women's Christian a.s.sociation announce the following rules for a young girl entering a strange city:

Do not start to a strange city or town without information about a safe place to stop.

Do not leave home without money for an emergency and sufficient for a return ticket.

Do not ask for or take information or direction except from officials.

Do not accept offers of work either by person or advertis.e.m.e.nt without investigation.

The Y. W. C. A. has employment bureaus and boarding-house directories, and cafeteria lunch-rooms.

Travelers' Aid Secretaries meet all incoming trains.

These appointed systems of relief for girls in difficulty the girls should understand about, and feel free to take refuge in them if occasion requires.

a.s.suredly there are many young women in the country who are fully as well prepared for the work of revitalizing the life in country and village community as the college-trained girls are. A number of these are far more so than some who have had the opportunity for higher education. It is said that a man can go through college and be a fool still. The same is no doubt true of a woman. But from those to whom much has been given, much will be required; and this requirement comes from all about us as well as from above.

The thing to be done is to cut off this thread of inevitable sequence at the beginning; to give the girl in the small town the movies and the other varied amus.e.m.e.nts that will make it impossible for her to think of going away; to give her the knowledge of the poisonous results of vicious contacts and companions.h.i.+ps that will make her abhor them with her very soul and be terrified of them; and to provide her with the opportunity for earning that will satisfy her self-respect as a unit in the home industrial community. These things cannot be done by one person alone; the parents must work at it, the better cla.s.s of girls in the community must work for it, using constantly varied tactics to meet the enemy; and the minister, the teacher, the people all together must combine to prevent this bitter inroad from entering rural life.

For the Country Girls who by nature, ability, predilection and training, are endowed for special service, there are attractive fields open. The work of visiting nurse, of physician, of home economics agent and demonstrator, of social secretary, of teacher, of minister and pastor, are available fields for womanly endeavor. No Country Girl need feel called to go to the other side of the world to fulfil her mission. In her own valley she can have a life work that will be full of the rich returns for her well-directed, self-sacrificing service.

CHAPTER x.x.x

THE COUNTRY GIRL'S SCORE CARD

I am aware As I go commonly sweeping the stair, Doing my part of the everyday care-- Human and simple my lot and my share-- I am aware of a marvelous thing: Voices that murmur and ethers that ring In the far stellar s.p.a.ces where cherubim sing.

I am aware of the pa.s.sion that pours Down the channels of fire through Infinity's doors; Forces terrific, with melody shod, Music that mates with pulses of G.o.d.

I am aware of the glory that runs From the core of myself to the core of the suns.