They never found her too busy to stop for a moment and never discovered her with either a headache or a lame back. Over and over I’ve heard her say to them, “Housekeeping is only a play game.” Then she would laugh until you couldn’t help believing that it really was. And to her it was. God bless her--to her it was. It was wonderful how far the influence of her laughter carried. And all this while we had been strengthening the pioneer idea, too. We found that older people responded to its spirit almost as eagerly as boys do to the same thing in a simpler form as expressed in the Boy Scout movement. There isn’t a boy with red blood in his veins, whether raised in New York, London or a country village, who isn’t stirred by the hardy principles that govern your true scout. It’s amazing to see how much of that spirit is in their blood; how gladly they return to more primitive conditions. Boys brought up in luxury taste their first real meal when they munch a slice of bacon sizzled over the embers of a wood fire or a potato cooked in the ashes. They learn the real meaning of sleep when at the end of a hard day’s hike they roll up in a blanket in the open. Boys are born pioneers the world over--even to-day. The spirit is educated out of them in many cases, more’s the pity, but after all it remains at the basis of every real man. So when at our meetings, directly and indirectly, we harped upon this idea and argued that the fun of living was within ourselves and not outside ourselves; when we insisted that the more we depended upon things outside ourselves for happiness, the less we responded; when we argued for a simpler standard in our clothes, our food, our surroundings, our amusements and a heartier dependence upon our work, we saw its effect. Much has been said about the advantage to farmers of the telephone, the rural mail which keeps them in daily touch with the outside world and labor-saving devices which make their work easier, but honestly I believe that if in the end this saves them from some evils it brings evils of its own which they haven’t yet learned to overcome. If these things save them from drudgery and monotony of one type it isn’t long before they face drudgery and monotony of another type, when they are allowed to dwell upon that feature of their work. There isn’t in the world a bigger drudge leading a more monotonous life than your city clerk who keeps agents scouring the world to furnish him amusement for his idle hours and to make the routine of his work lighter. And he’s just as apt to go crazy as your lonely farmer if he doesn’t learn to seek the joy of living within himself and not in his surroundings.