God's Green Country

f the great national movement which has caught the imaginative enthusiasm of the Young Generation. It is really leading the way to a finer community life. Many of us remember the o

n the creation of a better country life, are changing all this. Nothing in

higher life" ideas. He repeatedly unburdened his bitterness to Mary in Billy's absence, that he had been fool enough to let him go to school just to come home with his supe

he best rule he knew for health was to "forget it." Then Billy came in and he stopped. When Mary came home at night and took up the threads of her work where she had dropped them in the morning, however, he rested more

assured through that proceeding. Billy had never known her to appear so happy and he knew in his heart that while she had opposed so seriously his staying at home, she felt a support in his presence. A strange dread haunted him that the time might come when she would need him still more. His first i

practically, but most of them, I dare say, could have had all the schooling they ever got crowded into two full years. To make matters worse, we're putting on a course for the girls-cooking and the l

plans so he could get five days a week off, went to

o much, but I understand there are to be tobogganings and skating-parties and socials-sort of a sleigh-ride-and-taffy-pull phase of the keep-the-young-people-on-the-farm movement, and

red of a girl that when you went to a neighbor's in the evening you'd go around to the stable firs

theringly fro

f ideas of her own, but neither of you could advance any conversation at all because you hadn't the first shade of a common ground or a common interest? There was no

uld sa

all; and some of them the best girls in the country, too. They must have gone home heart-sick of it, but they always came back; you can't wonder much-there was a lot they didn't know and there wasn't any other excitement in their lives. A minister in the village here ventured the idea of fitting up a gymnasium in the basement of the church and having moving pictures on Wednesday nights, but one old reprobate of an elder opposed it until it was dropped. He considered it profanity in the first degree, and anyway he didn't want his daughter going to picture shows or dressing up in gymnasium rigs, but every time she came down to the post office, a new arrival in the vill

wish you'd go and take a look at the hall w

from some rough lumber, nailed some boxes together for a cupboard, then swept out his shavings and incidentally the dust

ut he stopped unloading chairs from a wood-r

I'll blacken the stove or scrub the floor if I have to, but I don't feel at all equal to meeting any post-graduate domestic

ve you five minutes to find a better

ere isn't any

me of the wom

.' The general trouble, however, is that she comes from the city-is rum

The second day it seemed as though some one, probably the girls themselves, had done some additional advertising.

ng over a yeast culture or copying the food constituents of cereals, he saw twenty or more girls coming down the hall practising the minuet. The teacher was there, with her back to him, demonstrating, of course; the girls themselves had never see

houldered girl from the Home, whose pride, almost her self-respect, had been crushed out of existence, curving her spine and lifting her head in admirable imitation of Miss Macdonald's poise. He didn't wonder at this at all. If ever a school of physical culture turned out a model it must be this girl, with her slim, perfect physique, her quiet, supple carriage, her entire absence of self-consciousness. Her whole personality radiated a wholesomeness. From her regular, white teeth, her hair still s

urmised that she was takin

cold water for soup, and boiling water for a stew; and by the questions they ask about why specialists have decided that it's better to keep a baby's feeding four hours apart instead of two. You can't give them very much in two weeks, but they have so much that is practical to begin on tha

e idea with encou

l part of it should be started unde

n't. I never thought of such

n Saturday afternoon. If the boys were interested w

me of the class, but sending everyone home with a happy anticipation for the next time. Before it was over Billy set out with Ruth to follow the creek for a few miles down through the moonlit stretches of frosted barrens. The g

out-doors soon after you lea

isite nursery in the attic of her big house, and got an expensive nurse to take care of me, but I just wouldn't thrive. It was a very patient and far-seeing teacher who took me to the fields and taught me to climb trees and spe

ir

ink we've com

a recreation enough to stop when it had recreated. He thought of the jaded girls he had seen dragging through after-midnight dances, in rooms reeking with air so poisoned that even the lamps burned blue and flickered, a

pe effects for the spring planting, and the practicability of power systems for the farms and homes of the districts. Instead of discovering his teen-age irresponsibles floundering "in the Sloughs of Sentimentality," he found a free and easy mixing of a few older people in every entertainment and none of the clandestine pairing off so general in some of their former affair

had played such an important part in directing his own early interests, he found the Representative unusua

en Miss Macd

adn't s

l. She never should have been there in the first place. I'll bet the walls are fairly dripping dampness, and you probably know

dn't

e about knocking arou

u going to d

pose what she needs is mustard plasters and g

out the windo

come home with me and let my

n decided he was wrong. He had never in his experience with agricultural undergraduates com

ordinary kind of a farm house," he apologized, "but I think it would be

t the imposition; she wasn't accustomed to such consider

r own. She felt no homesickness for her uncle's luxurious house and her aunt's efficient, methodical ministrations. She liked to lie in the deep feather bed with a flannel-wrapped hot brick at her feet; and she liked to have Billy's mothe

she would have tried. But such a girl! She had always treasured the hope that sometime there would be such a one,

ther than an inconvenient red square on her chest that interfered with wearing the regulation dinner-gown. He looked up surprised. He stretched his imagination for