FIFTY MILLION STRONG 



" Life is a beautiful adventure," to quote Charles Frohman, 

 who went down with the Lusitania. The Brownings experi- 

 enced the "wild joy of living," the Goethes, the Scotts, the 

 Lincolns and hosts of others found life packed full of interest. 

 All these were possessed of a lively sense of humor. 



A second essential of leadership is imagination. The 

 imagination is the wonderful faculty of the mind that uses 

 the materials at the disposal of all, and, taking every kind of 

 liberty with them, produces combinations that fill the world 

 with perennial newness, beauty and attractiveness. Some- 

 times the materials at hand are very meager, and unless one's 

 imagination is fully equal to the situation stagnation or ennui 

 or pessimism or despair results. Miss Jessie Field, in quoting 

 from Eggleston and Bruere, brings out this thought beauti- 

 fully. " Starting at Nowhere with Nothing and getting 

 Somewhere with Something, is after all the test of useful 

 leadership." x The sentence might have closed with these 

 words, " is evidence of the possession of a rare faculty of 

 imagination." The writer continues : " This nation would 

 be transformed if every rural worker would do his or her 

 work in so unusual a manner that the unusual would become 

 the usual." 2 . What is it if not imagination that takes the 

 usual and transforms it into the unusual? A teacher with 

 imagination in one of the Southern States conceived the idea 

 of arousing among her pupils an interest in good books. In 

 the past little had been done with books, the little country 

 school having no library whatever and the homes from which 

 the pupils came having only motley collections of books, few 

 of which were adapted to the needs of the growing child. 

 So this teacher secured one of the most delightful children's 

 books and began to read it aloud to the school. In a very 

 short time the starved little minds were literally devouring 

 the wonderful incidents of the story. Taking advantage of 

 this natural avidity of the pupils, the teacher told them that 

 if they could raise some money they might have a collection 



1 " College Women and Country Leadership," p. 14. 



2 " College Women and Country Leadership," p. 14. 



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