The American Country Girl Part 26

It breaks over all dividing lines because every individual in the community can have at least some part in it. The pride in the success of the whole can be shared by every least child, by each most important person, by the rich and the poor, by the wise and by the unlearned; for there has been a place for each one, according to his ability. The pageant is democratic; all individuals work for the success of the whole, not for the glorification of any single one, never for the glorification of self. It develops a personality of the community itself.

Above all things it gives the person and the community a chance to gain the joy that comes from the expression of that creative sense that lies at the base of all artistic ability, that power in which the human being is most near to the G.o.d-like. Here the poets and dramatic writers of earth, the great souls of the Greek and of the Elizabethan ages have been partakers of the fervor that was with G.o.d under the symbol of "Wisdom" as that wonderful poem in the eighth chapter of the Book of Proverbs, relates, when with joy He created the earth.

Among all the good things that may come in the new upspringing of this artistic interest, the young women in the rural realm have a distinct function. In the planning of the play or pageant the young people will be brought together in social ways that are full of opportunity for high-toned acquaintanceship and culture under the best auspices. Ladies and gentlemen, young men and young ladies, will be working together for an artistic purpose; the result will be not only an enlarged community spirit among all, but a great number of personal ties that will be of enduring value. May not this be still another interest that will bind the younger members of the village life more closely to the home place so that they cannot be lured away?

There are pageants that may be enacted by young girls alone when fairies and sylphs and angels hold the stage and delight the eye with their many-hued robes and their beautiful movements. The Young Women's Christian a.s.sociation has given some altogether delightful masques and pageants; the Camp Fire Girls have done the same. In their societies, whatever the kind, Country Girls may undertake some of the plays of smaller scope but quite as beautiful in their way as those in which the whole community join, and in this way find their hands filled with pleasing and recompensing labor.

CHAPTER XXVII

ORGANIZATIONS, ESPECIALLY THE YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN a.s.sOCIATION

Raise the stone: thou shalt find me there; Cleave the wood, and there am I.

--_Logia of Jesus._

CHAPTER XXVII

ORGANIZATIONS, ESPECIALLY THE YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN a.s.sOCIATION

In a Memoir that belongs to the cla.s.sic traditions of our country, that of David Brainerd the Missionary, we read that he besought the Lord that he might not be too much pleased and amused with dear friends and acquaintances one place and another. We have now a new and different ideal of community feeling; we pray that we may be "pleased and amused with dear friends and acquaintances," for we realize that only by having ideas together and working together may we reach the highest ideals not only for the community but for the individual.

Where isolation becomes really intolerable, the Country Girl cannot be blamed for taking the first means to relieve herself of its dangers. But where there is a possibility of making a stagnant place become healthily busy and interesting, she must be blamed for not making an attempt in that direction.

An a.s.sociation of the girls alone is always possible if there is even one more than one to start with. Perhaps others will soon join. The most unpromising material, if it is human material, can be brought into line and made something of. But there must be a start.

Now and then we know there is a girl found among the good people of a village who has thoroughly bad inclinations. Such a one, after the case is made clear, must be put into the hands of some person of trained experience and mature judgment. This is not to be managed by the girls themselves. Because of this possibility it is thought best that every club for girls, especially for the younger girls, should have a guardian or a secretary of older years. Whatever rules are made, say, for instance, by the Young Women's Christian a.s.sociation, in the fundamental plans for societies of girls, we may be sure they have been devised by people who are good, and who desire the best for the girls, and who understand the whole situation and speak and act from this knowledge.

It may be that the girl who will entertain the bold idea of forming a club or society is not by any means the one who most needs the club. She thinks of it because some happy circ.u.mstance has developed in her a power of initiative, the courage or instinct for beginning something new. It takes courage sometimes to undertake an absolutely new work; and the girl who has been always helped, never told to go ahead and do things for herself, will not have developed that power. The ability to start things can be hypnotized out of anybody; the faculty for it, if once possessed, can be deadened or suppressed beyond the last degree of vitality. To take the first step is a matter of life or death with such a long suppressed nature; but that one step over, the crushed vitality springs strangely to life and then every step is easier. Then the beautiful experience lies before you of constantly growing life; faculties that you hardly knew you possessed spring into being. This is growth, and growth is the only life.

There will sometimes be in the village one girl who cherishes a higher ideal of conduct than she sees embodied in the life about her. Where did she get it? Perhaps from a mother who, immersed in her home cares and burdens, has taken little part in the affairs in the town. She in turn received from her mother delicate thoughts that have vanished from the village when a lower standard of manners came in with certain new and less cultivated people. In this new atmosphere the daughter has tried to live and has been mostly alone. Lack of companionship has made her unsocial and somewhat unbending. Her mind lacks swift response because she has had no chance to practise swiftness of response in conversation and repartee. Moreover, she has not the influence among the girls that she ought to have because they take her search for better forms of conduct for self-conceit; they consider her proud and stiff and priggish; those touches of ceremoniousness which she chooses because of her pa.s.sion for beauty and grace, they consider affectation. There is no place like the country to put affectation in its place; but it is as possible there as elsewhere to misjudge the real sources of inspiration in matters of conduct.

In the hearts of these very girls who look askance at the solitary one as she pa.s.ses along the village path and talk among themselves about her primness and her pride, there may be a great admiration for her after all, a desire to copy all her little touches of elegance, a swift noting of her graces and of everything new she adds to her repertoire of manners. If she keeps her body very straight and holds her chin correctly, they will be looking in the gla.s.s to find out whether their spinal column can be stiffened to give the same effect. They may laugh at her but they try to imitate her.

After all, you see, the fundamental standards are the same; the difference being that one girl comes almost to the point of living up to them, the other girls have tried and because of ignorance or lack of opportunity have failed, and have looked upon their failure until they have despaired of ever succeeding. Fundamentally there is the same desire at the heart of both the refined recluse girl who longs to have company among the other girls, and the less agreeable, less refined and less cultivated girls who secretly envy while they ridicule, and are waiting only for the open door to enable them to walk in and leave their coa.r.s.eness and bungling outside.

The first step for such a girl to take in working out her desire to be of help to the other girls, is to show them in some way that she really cares for them and that, as far as her heart goes she is one with them.

If she can only get out of her seeming stiffness for a little while and get down to the real heart beneath, the other girls will respond, and pretty soon the happy influence of the spirit of unity will a.s.sert itself and the true basis in desire for better things--whatever they may turn out to be--will be a bond between the elements. Then some kind of play or some kind of work may be proposed. It does not matter so much what is done as it matters that something shall be done and done together. _Do something together_--that is the main thing. Anything, anything at all--only that it be _together_! Then after the doing of something together has begun, the next steps are possible.

The young woman in the rural community may see things that need to be done and be unable to think of any way to accomplish the reform. Here comes in the good of an a.s.sociation. For instance, something may be going wrong in the village. There is a dangerous manure heap by a wall.

On the other side of the wall lives a family with children. The big black flies are creeping on the heap and then they fly over and light upon the baby's lips, dropping death-dealing poison as they move along over the pure skin of the child. What is there that any one girl can do about such a thing? She may feel that she is not the one to approach the old gentleman who owns the uncared-for barnyard; he would never listen to what some chit of a girl would say to him; no, evidently that would do no good. But if the young girl has some social position and some popularity among the other girls in the village, she can organize them into a club or society; she can make out programs for meetings into which some useful modern subjects are sprinkled; she can in a little time get the whole village agog about the care of their spotless town, and at last, the thought will rise to the surface that said neighbor must do something about the abuse of neighborliness he has committed in leaving his barnyard untended for so long a time. The club of girls could take for its motto, "No fly in our village"; and no worthier one could be found, at least for a time. Other forms of aspiration might follow. Meantime, perhaps, the baby has died; and this thought may bring it home to us that the keeping of the village clean is a sort of King's Business requiring haste.

It is always a good plan to save red tape by taking advantage of any existing a.s.sociations that may be made to answer our need. The Country Girl is happy in having several such societies that she may join. Among these may be mentioned the Young Women's Christian a.s.sociation, the Young Women's Hebrew a.s.sociation, the Educational Alliance, the Girls'

Friendly Society, the King's Daughters, the Sodality of the Children of Mary, the Girls' Athletic League, the Girls' Protective League, the Camp Fire Girls, the Good Templars, and the Grange, a society in which the women have the same privileges as the men and where young and older members meet and work together. The International Congress for Farm Women has a section for young women.

Among all these the one that has the most to give to the young women of the countryside is the Young Women's Christian a.s.sociation--an a.s.sociation that now includes a glorious company of two hundred and eighty thousand young women. The fundamental thought in their work is "character-contagion"; first the contagion of the character of Christ as an influence in the world; second, the contagion of the character of a Christ-like human being among others. This thought is expressed in their handbook in these words: "With the contagion of Christian character as a definite object the very first ideal of the a.s.sociation is that every person placed in a position of responsibility for any part of the work shall embody the spirit of Christ."

Flaming with enthusiasm for this ideal, over a hundred national secretaries are carrying on the work among nine hundred local societies in this country, and over thirty are sent to Turkey, j.a.pan, India, China, and South America, that the girls of other lands also may learn to know the good that girls can do for girls.

For this a.s.sociation follows the theory that "every girl needs help, and every girl can give help." The declaration strikes to the bottom of things psychological in girl-life. Girls need each other. No one can help a girl like a girl. If there is any trouble with any girl or with any pair or group of girls, get a girl--the right kind of girl--to come and redirect the group. If new thoughts, new ideals, new enthusiasms embodied in a new girl can be brought in, the old thoughts will disappear themselves. There are trees on which the old leaves hang withered and dead all winter long: the rains cannot rot them away, the winds cannot whip them off. But when in the spring the new life begins to come coursing up the trunk, runs out through the branches, and presses a new end against the root of the dead stem, it yields at last and makes way for the leaf and flower and fruit that imperatively insist upon having more room. Those who wish to redirect young human life may find a practise lesson in this example of nature. To make faulty habits or low ideals or dangerous inclinations disappear, bring in new life.

And experience teaches that new life can be imparted in no way more effectively in the field of girl-life than through good n.o.ble girl a.s.sociates. To a.s.sociate girls under some n.o.ble banner that will a.s.sure their enthusiasm and loyalty, will therefore be one of the most direct means of lifting their standard of living.

This a.s.sociation more than any other has taken to heart the problem of the Country Girl. Two of the hand bills of the a.s.sociation show how they feel about the Country Girl and what she needs and what she may have if she will take the right means.

THE GIRL IN THE COUNTRY

"_Where the wide earth yields_ _Her beauties of fruit and grain._"

If the country is to continue to produce not only the food but the hardiest young men and women, and much of the idealism and best leadership of the nation,

Life MUST be made

_Less Solitary_ _More Comfortable_ _More Attractive_ _Freer from Drudgery_ _Happier and_ _Fuller of Opportunity_

For the 21,000,000 girls and women on the farms and in the villages!

Solving the Rural Problem

Through

The Country Young Women's Christian a.s.sociation.

It brings to the girls in the country and small towns

The opportunity of self-development and self-expression The chance to work and play with other girls Higher social standards Spiritual growth and Christian ideals Contact with a world-wide organization A community consciousness.

These girls give back to their community

Trained leadership Joyful, rich, vivid lives Improved economic conditions for women Consecrated homes Christian spirit in work and play Cooperation.

The Young Women's Christian a.s.sociation feels that it is its "privilege to reach the Country Girls in terms of their own environment, helping them to help themselves and to become active social forces in their own communities."

Pursuing this thought, the wonderful idea was. .h.i.t upon of using the available energy of the Country Girl that goes away to college as she returns to her home full of inspiration for a "career." The career of being a good angel to her home community is offered to her.

[Ill.u.s.tration: One of the many Eight Weeks' Clubs organized throughout the country by the Y. W. C. A.]

Carrying out this purpose with energy and great enthusiasm, as they do everything they take up, the Y. W. C. A. inst.i.tuted a special section of their work which they called the "Eight Weeks Club." Under this scheme, in the late winter or early spring, trained secretaries who are able to give time and strength to the work and who are touched with the flame of that character-contagion, are sent out to the colleges. Preparation cla.s.ses are formed among these girls, schemes are marked out for the summer, and a suggested plan of study printed for them in the a.s.sociation Monthly is gone over. In the summer of 1914 about nine hundred names of Country Girls in college who were willing to embark for the summer's work were received. They came from one hundred and fifty-eight different colleges. Not all of these were eventually able to lead clubs; some were prevented by sickness, by family reasons, etc., after they got home. But there were one hundred and seventy-two who reported promptly that they did actually lead Eight Weeks Clubs, and about 2800 girls were enrolled in these clubs. The clubs represented thirty-one States, Pennsylvania leading with twenty-two, Iowa having nineteen, South Dakota ten, Wisconsin twelve.[2]

If you think that there is not much that you, a lone, single girl without any help can do, listen to this story which one of the Christian a.s.sociation secretaries tells of the experience of one college girl who went to teach in a small town. "The first Sunday I was in town," she said, "I went to Sunday School. There were eight people there and they were all old. On the next Sunday there were five and one of them was blind; and what do you think? They asked me to take the superintendency." Did she take it? The secretary says she held her breath for the answer, for on just such a turning-point as this hangs the solution of the whole country problem. "I did; and when I went away in the spring, there were ninety-three in that Sunday School and none of them was blind."

If one lone Country Girl can do so much as that, what might not be accomplished if all the girls in the community were as one heart and mind to work together for the Sunday School, for the Church, for the Christian Endeavor and the Epworth League, and for all the causes that seek higher things in the community? A young woman may never know what emergency she may be training for when she begins to teach a Sunday School cla.s.s.