It is not a matter to be treated lightly. Whatever burden there is to be borne falls more heavily upon the wife than upon the husband in the farmstead. If the farm is isolated, she is the loneliest person there. If there is poverty, she has the least to use or to spend. If there is lack of labor-saving devices, she has far fewer than the farmer has. If life there is monotonous, hers is the victim of the greatest sameness, the unending changelessness of three meals a day through planting and harvesting, through week days and Sundays, year in and year out. Professor Fiske, author of _The Challenge of the Country_, takes a large view when he touches this phase of the subject. "The annual conquest of farm difficulties," he says, "makes splendid fighting. There are plenty of natural enemies which must be fought to keep a man's fighting-edge keen and to keep him physically and mentally alert. What with the weeds and the weather, the cut-worms, the gypsy, and the coddling moths, the lice, the maggots, the caterpillars, the San Jose scale, and the scurvy, the blight and the gouger, the peach yellows and the deadly curculio, the man behind the bug gun and the sprayer finds plenty of exercise for ingenuity and a royal chance to fight the good fight. Effeminacy is not a farm trait. Country life is great for making men; men of robust health and mental resources well tested by difficulty, men of the open air and the skyward outlook. Country dwellers may well be thankful for the challenge of the difficult. It tends to keep rural life strong." This was written from the standpoint of the farmer himself and his business. A like account and with quite as much zoology in it could be made for the women that share his problems. Life under farming conditions is as likely to provide opportunity to develop character in the women folks as in the men; and the daughter in the house may receive some of the benefits of this developing discipline. To have a joyous share in a useful work is one of the most satisfying things in the world. In such a joy as this, the daughter in the farmstead is, within the bounds of her working capacity, invited to partake. She may have the inspiration of work, the exhilaration of struggle, and the keen delight of victory in the solution of farm problems. There is much that she can do without injury, even if she is not very strong, and almost nothing that she cannot do, if she is robust and vigorous. If the housework seems a hardship, the matter must be attacked as a problem and studied into to see what can be devised to lessen the drudgery or re-adapt the burden. Invariably the parents should consider what is good for the girl, not what is good for the farm. Sacrifice the farm, if need be, but save the daughter. [Illustration: The Inheritance. The Country Girl working cheerfully beside her mother, will learn much that will be of value to her in her effort to make the housework of to-day a joy and not a burden.]