Among all the good things that may come in the new upspringing of this artistic interest, the young women in the rural realm have a distinct function. In the planning of the play or pageant the young people will be brought together in social ways that are full of opportunity for high-toned acquaintanceship and culture under the best auspices. Ladies and gentlemen, young men and young ladies, will be working together for an artistic purpose; the result will be not only an enlarged community spirit among all, but a great number of personal ties that will be of enduring value. May not this be still another interest that will bind the younger members of the village life more closely to the home place so that they cannot be lured away? There are pageants that may be enacted by young girls alone when fairies and sylphs and angels hold the stage and delight the eye with their many-hued robes and their beautiful movements. The Young Women's Christian Association has given some altogether delightful masques and pageants; the Camp Fire Girls have done the same. In their societies, whatever the kind, Country Girls may undertake some of the plays of smaller scope but quite as beautiful in their way as those in which the whole community join, and in this way find their hands filled with pleasing and recompensing labor. CHAPTER XXVII ORGANIZATIONS, ESPECIALLY THE YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION Raise the stone: thou shalt find me there; Cleave the wood, and there am I. --_Logia of Jesus._ CHAPTER XXVII ORGANIZATIONS, ESPECIALLY THE YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION In a Memoir that belongs to the classic traditions of our country, that of David Brainerd the Missionary, we read that he besought the Lord that he might not be too much pleased and amused with dear friends and acquaintances one place and another. We have now a new and different ideal of community feeling; we pray that we may be "pleased and amused with dear friends and acquaintances," for we realize that only by having ideas together and working together may we reach the highest ideals not only for the community but for the individual. Where isolation becomes really intolerable, the Country Girl cannot be blamed for taking the first means to relieve herself of its dangers. But where there is a possibility of making a stagnant place become healthily busy and interesting, she must be blamed for not making an attempt in that direction. An association of the girls alone is always possible if there is even one more than one to start with. Perhaps others will soon join. The most unpromising material, if it is human material, can be brought into line and made something of. But there must be a start.