THE LIFE WORTH LIVING IN THE COUNTEY. 305 



the country school with all its defects for the crowded, germ- 

 laden air, the mechanical routine, the impersonal methods almost 

 necessary in large city schools. Country mothers may rather 

 combine to improve the country school, go to the school-meeting, 

 speak and vote for better provision for the school, and refuse to 

 scrimp its supplies to the least possibility, as is sometimes done. 



Country mothers may wisely work to unite several small 

 schools into one larger graded school. 



They may plan from the infancy of those children to give them 

 the many advantages of absence from home for an academy and 

 college education under the best influences. 



The defects of the country school may be largely remedied at 

 home by the stimulus given in books and periodicals and by 

 helpful talks with the children. No school privileges are so good 

 as such talks with intelligent fathers and mothers. John Stuart 

 Mill attributed all his mental ability to his daily talks in his child- 

 hood with his father as they walked together. 



And all the costly industrial training of the city schools, with 

 its rich returns there, is not so good for the development of men- 

 tal powers or for the acquirement of practical skill as the daily 

 farm work in which the boys and girls have a live interest. As 

 Rollin Lynde Hartt says : "It takes brains to run a farm. You 

 are the defter and the wiser and the brim-fuller of versatile, poly- 

 technic resourcefulness every day of your rustic life. The 

 farmer is merchant, executive manager, political economist, 

 woodman, ice-cutter, physician, veterinary, weather prophet, bi- 

 ologist, cobbler, barber, brewer and systematic theologian." 



The country woman often thinks that she would have for her- 

 self greater intellectual and social advantages if she were living 

 in the city. The concerts, lectures, clubs, art galleries, pic- 

 ture exhibitions would doubtless be beneficial, would be, with 

 the daily contact with diverse minds, delightful and quickening. 

 It is easy, however, to overestimate the number of these good 

 things which one could with the same income as in the country 

 enjoy in a city. Even the entertainments provided by the church- 

 es usually require street car fare, and that item for the family 

 is not a small expense. To hear the great singers, lectures and 

 readers involves for a family an expenditure of several dollars 

 for the evening; the average city woman must content herself 

 with very few of these luxuries during a season. 



The general activity of city life, the many good things open 

 to all, the relief to the general monotony and dullness of life, the 

 new subjects of conversation constantly arising, the general 



