To what extent, then, does the farmstead offer opportunity for such growth? Is it too much to ask that the ultimate joy of living, the joy of growth, should be brought very near to the eyes of the people living on the farmsteads, that their imaginations should be touched even more keenly than they now are to a consciousness of the real possibilities in their environment? What can we do to create an atmosphere that will give its own enthusiasm to the people, that will bind each member of the farmstead indissolubly to the place; one in which there shall be so swift a certainty that it will seem like magic; that must so charm the mind and the heart of each one that the tie will hold against any kind of onslaught?
But the claim is being made in some quarters that the countryside home does not live up to its possibilities in this respect, and if not in this respect then the country life movement has a real pang behind it as well as an uprising of renewed life. If the father in the home, who is the farmer and head of the homestead, does not find happiness according to his needs, it may from all the signs be concluded that the government and the universities and the newspapers and the legislators are busying themselves to the greatest possible extent to relieve his disabilities; he may be left in their care for the present. Of the farmer's wife, who is the head of the home and the partner with her husband in the farm business, the government has lately in a group of letters addressed to fifty-five thousand farm-woman correspondents, asked the question, What do you wish to have done that your life may be more filled with content and that your disabilities may be relieved? It is safe to presume that the longings of their hearts will be by some means satisfied in longer or shorter meter. The sons are sharing the fortunes of the fathers, but if they are not, numbers of them may go out from the home valley and easily seek what they believe will be a better fortune along the outer avenues of a man's activities. And the daughter? While that ship comes slowly in that is to bring something comforting to her mother, while her father is giving the farm the benefit of his fast accumulating scientific information and lessening the daily labor by up-to-date machinery, what is happening to her? Is she having her share of content? Has she the chance to grow and fill full the possible round of her own personal development? Is the Country Girl happy on the farm? Or is she in her heart dissatisfied and glowering? Is she suppressed and sodden in mood? Is her face expressionless and too old for her years? Is she round-shouldered and heavy of step? Is she listless and suspicious and sensitive?