Farm life -- United States; Girls -- United States
The efficient Country Girl of to-day is often as equal to the management
of the intractable horse as a man: she rides the disc-plough and she
runs the automobile. It would only be in some backward section of the
country or in some tradition-bound family, where the daughter could not
drive the horses and have the use of a conveyance to go to town whenever
it seemed to her to be necessary. It has been suggested by an eminent
authority that the farm woman should go to town once a week and should
also go to a neighbor's every week for an afternoon's visit. What then
should be the excursions of the daughter during the years when she is
growing up and becoming a young lady, entering upon her duties as
hostess and social leader? There should not a day pass when she does not
have some contact with the social world of the rural community. She
should have a large letter-writing correspondence and make it yield her
all the culture possible. She should take part in every commendable
social organization that is accessible and with her mother's cooperation
make her home a center of gracious social welcome to friends and
neighbors. With the new machinery there will be much greater
simplification possible in the household, and in the wake of this may
enter our old-time friend, Hospitality, so long and sadly missed from
our ferny lanes.
Perhaps it is not necessary to suggest that the greatest care should be
taken to place under the safest conditions the social life in which the
daughter bears a part. In order that this may be so there is no better
safeguard than that the mother should be in closest confidence with the
daughter, should be present at all the parties, should be in all the
fun. This is the scheme now most approved under the best social auspices
and is adopted in the country wherever they live up to the most refined
models. It means that the mother must never lose the thread of her
daughter's confidence; and if she has done so by the mistake of some
past day, she must leave no stone unturned, by tact and love and prayer,
to regain the lost ground. It means joining in all the games; it means
taking an interest in all the youthful plans. It means adapting her mind
to the youthful mind. It means--but why should I tell mothers what that
means? They know. And the daughters must do their part too in keeping
the confidence-thread between themselves and their mother always perfect
and golden.
When a community is really dead, we may know the fact by the absence of
sociability. The whole country problem hinges chiefly upon this social
matter; and as the woman is the essential upholder of the community the
world over in social affairs, it behooves the young woman in rural life
to prepare for these responsibilities if she will ward off from the farm
and village community a deadly and intolerable inaction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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