WOMAN'S PART IN THE WORK 325 



enable them to render assistance to one another and to shed bright- 

 ness and happiness around. Outward conditions in country life 

 tend strongly towards isolation. However, we have it on the highest 

 authority that, even in Paradise, " it is not good for man to be alone." 

 And we may take it that Sterne gave expression to a common human 

 sentiment when he addressed his prayer to Providence : " Give me 

 a companion with whom to share interests and exchange thoughts, 

 were it even only to observe how our shadows lengthen as the sun 

 goes down." What attracts country folk, weary of rural monotony, 

 into towns is not only the cinema and the gay tavern, but to an even 

 greater extent it is the company that they find amid a denser popu- 

 lation, the company of like-minded men and women to associate 

 with, the social intercourse, exchange of thought, awakening of 

 mutual sympathies and the sense of not being alone. 



It took considerable time to rouse people in the new world to 

 accept Mr. Roosevelt's guide-call to the promotion of country life — 

 even in a country in which, amid a motley crowd of settlers, of 

 different origin, different habits and different ideals, the closing up 

 of ranks in the secluded life of rural settlement seems a priori of 

 much greater urgency than one would at first glance hold it to be in 

 our long-settled country, with its ancient villages, organised genera- 

 tions ago, and its parishes well laid out with all their distinctive 

 features, supposed to knit men together, from time almost im- 

 memorial. However, once the idea came to be digested and assimi- 

 lated, its execution was taken up with the earnestness characteristic 

 of our transatlantic cousins, once their interest is awakened. The 

 formation of " community life " is one of the main objects that the 

 Government and public opinion alike — and in one sense of what is 

 profitable for the cause which it represents, also the United States 

 Department of Agriculture — have set themselves. And it is the 

 same in Canada, where essentially the same problem has to be 

 grappled with which taxes the efforts of the more southern Republic- 

 In both countries the authorities concerned realise that agriculture 

 — which after all supplies only the raw material out of which rural 

 happiness is to be manufactured, and is called upon to pay the rent 

 which the community is entitled to ask for the use of the national 

 soil— cannot prosper if its pursuit is not made to render satisfaction 

 in the shape of contentment to those who practise it. " To improve 

 our system of Agriculture," so wrote Mr. Roosevelt in his message 

 already quoted, " seems to me the most urgent of the tasks which 

 lie before us. But it cannot, in my judgment, be effected by measures 

 which touch only the material and technical side of the subject ; the 



