WOMAN'S PART IN THE WORK 313 



there should be no home life, there are believed to be substitutes — 

 often enough very deceptive substitutes. Still, there is the promise 

 for those who seek such shelter. 



It was reserved for the New World to strike up a new note and set 

 a new aim to rural women's existence — a note of which only during 

 the War an echo has sounded across to our shores — to reverberate 

 rapidly through the length and breadth of our rural world, but not 

 to ring even so as yet with quite its original force. The little 

 country of Belgium has been beforehand with us in this matter, 

 carrying the Promethean spark eagerly across the sea, in order 

 to light up on new soil the warming vestal fire in its Cercles de 

 Fermieres and similar institutions, the main object of which is to 

 constitute rural women what they are advisedly called across the 

 Atlantic, that is, " home-makers." 



We, as already stated, have no country homes yet for our toiling 

 folk. The " big house " is full of home comforts ; so is the par- 

 sonage ; and so are gentlefolk's country residences. In those 

 habitations you get the true smack of home life, which it is one of 

 the boasts of our country that we possess as it is nowhere else to be 

 found. However, the charm of home life does not descend lower in 

 the social scale. Our rural labouring folk, like the foolish virgins of 

 the parable, have no light to lighten up their chronic darkness. 

 Their little lamps, whatever their intrinsic value may be, are empty 

 and dry, and there is for them no oil to be got. And yet it is these 

 people who want a home most. Everywhere else, beyond our 

 borders, wherever we may look, their classmates have something. 

 We admire the primness of the French cottage, with its little garden 

 spick and span, its humble room neatly kept and tastefully decorated 

 with some simple ornament, a bit of ribbon here and a muslin 

 curtain there, flowers in the windows and in vases, while the odour 

 of the pot coming from the pot simmering over the fire tells of some 

 savoury dish preparing, made up, it may be, of nothings, judiciously 

 and thoughtfully put together in their carefully prepared stock, 

 getting ready for a toothsome meal. It is the French, so we know, 

 even the poor among them, who have taught us many a useful 

 lesson in cookery, not for the fashionable table only. It was the 

 French prisoners, during the great wars of Napoleonic days, who 

 showed us how to turn our oxtails, which previously we unthriftily 

 threw away as refuse, to good account in preparing a dish which has 

 become something of a prized national speciality. They have more 

 to teach us to-day. 



The German cottage home is less neat and seductive. But it 



