When the city woman wants a shelf put up she 'phones to the City Relief, and gets a man to do it for her; the farmer's wife hunts up the hammer and a soap box and puts up her own shelf, and gains the independence of character which only come from achievement. Similarly the children of the country neighborhoods have had to make their own fun, which they do with great enthusiasm, for, under any circumstances, children will play. The city children pay for their amusement. They pay their nickel, and sit back, apparently saying: "Now, amuse me if you can! What are you paid for?" The blase city child who comes sighing out of picture shows is a sad sight. They know everything, and their little souls are a-weary of this world. It is a cold day for any child who has nothing left to wonder at. The desire to play is surely a great stroke of Providence, and one of which the world has only recently begun to learn. Take the matter of picnics. I have seen people hold a picnic on the bare prairie, where the nearest tree was miles away, and the only shade was that of a barbed-wire fence, but everybody was happy. The success of a picnic depends upon the mental attitude, not on cool shade or purling streams. I remember seeing from the train window a party of young people carrying a boat and picnic baskets, one hot day in July. A little farther on we passed a tiny lake set in a thick growth of tall grass. It was a very small lake, indeed. I ran to the rear platform of the train and watched it as long as I could; I was so afraid some cow would come along and drink it dry before they got there. Not long ago I made some investigations as to why boys and girls leave the farm, and I found in over half the cases the reason given was that life on the farm was "too slow, too lonely, and no fun." In country neighborhoods family life means more than it does in the city. The members of a family are at each other's mercy; and so, if the "father" always has a grouch, and the "mother" is worried, and tired, and cross, small wonder that the children try to get away. In the city there is always the "movie" to go to, and congenial companionship down the street, and so we mourn the depopulation of our rural neighborhoods. We all know that the country is the best place in which to bring up children; that the freckle-faced boy, with bare feet, who hunts up the cows after school, and has to keep the woodbox full, and has to remember to shut the henhouse door, is getting a far better education than the carefree city boy who has everything done for him.