PROBLEMS OF COUNTRY LIFE 113 



to polish it. Now, much of the so-called barrenness of country 

 life is the oak minus the polish. We come to regard polish as 

 essential; it is only relative. And not only may we apply the 

 wrong standard to our situation, but our eyes may deceive us. 

 To the uninitiated a clod of dry earth is the most unpromising 

 of objects it is cousin to the stone and the type of barrenness. 

 But to the elect it is pregnant with the possibilities of seed-time 

 and harvest, of a full fruitage, of abundance and content for 

 man and beast. And there is many a farm home, plain to the 

 extreme, devoid of the veneer, a home that to the man of the 

 town seems lacking in all the things that season life, but a home 

 which virtue, intelligence, thrift, and courage transform into a 

 garden of roses and a type of heaven. I do not justify neglect 

 of the finer material things of life, nor plead for drab and 

 homespun as passports to the courts of excellence; but I insist 

 that plainness, simple living, absence of luxury, lack of polish 

 that may be met with in the country, do not necessarily accom- 

 pany a condition barren of the essentials of the higher life. 



Sometimes rural communities are ridiculed because of the 

 trivial nature of their gossip, interests and ambitions. There 

 may be some justice in the criticism, though the situation is 

 pathetic rather than humorous. But is the charge wholly just? 

 In comparing country with town we are comparing two environ- 

 ments; necessarily, therefore, objects of gossip, interests, and 

 ambitions differ therein. We expect that. It is no criticism to 

 assert that fact. The test is not that of an existing difference, 

 but of an essential quality. Is not Ben Bolt's new top buggy 

 as legitimate a topic for discussion as is John Arthur Smythe's 

 new automobile? Does not the price of wheat mean as much 

 to the hard-working grower as to the banker who may never 

 see a grain of it? May not the grove at Turtle Lake yield as 

 keen enjoyment as do the continental forests? Is the ambition 

 to own a fine farm more ignoble than the desire to own shares in 

 a copper mine? It really does not matter so much what one 

 gossips about or what one's delights are or what the carvings on 

 the rungs of ambition's ladder; the vital question is the effect 

 of these things on character. Do they stunt or encourage the 

 inner life? It must be admitted that country people do not al- 



