Читать книгу The American Country Girl - Martha Foote Crow - Страница 4

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The author acknowledges with gratitude the kindness of her friends among the members of her fraternity, and among the graduates of Wellesley College, of Northwestern, Syracuse, and Chicago Universities, and of Grinnell College, who carefully found Country Girl correspondents for her in all parts of the country; and especially of Professor Martha Van Rensselaer of Cornell University who generously shared with her some of the results of a questionnaire on The Young Woman on the Farm, which was sent out by the Home Economics Department of that University.

It would be impossible to name here all the helpers that this book has the honor to claim; the many specialists who have been good enough to advise the author; the enthusiasts whose fire has sustained her courage; and above all the many friends who have entertained her in their country homes and talked over with her their problems. The author would, however, acknowledge her special indebtedness to the Honorable John T. Roberts, the well known lover and sympathetic critic of country life, who gave valuable time to reading her manuscript and made some vital suggestions; and to Miss Mary L. Read, head of the School of Mothercraft, who gave some of the chapters a studious criticism.

While acknowledging many sources of inspiration the author alone is responsible for the opinions expressed in the book, opinions sometimes maintained against valued authority. All quotations from Country Girl experiences are made with direct personal permission of the writers; the kindness of the girls, who for the sake of other girls have given these permissions, is here mentioned with special appreciation.

For illustrations the author is indebted to the Home Economics and other Departments of the Agricultural College at Cornell University and to the Home Economics Department of the School of Agriculture at Alfred, N. Y.; also to Mr. S. H. Dadisman of the Agricultural College at Ames, Iowa; to Mr. O. H. Benson of the United States Department of Agriculture; to Mr. A. A. Allen of the Cayuga Bird Club, and to Mr. James M. Pierce of the Iowa Homestead of Des Moines, Iowa. The list should also include Mr. R. M. Rosbrugh of Syracuse, N. Y., and Mrs. Mabel Stuart Lewis, efficient homesteader, of Fladmoe, South Dakota. Other names are mentioned in the text and need not be repeated here. To these and other helpers, great thanks are due.

This book has been written about the Country Girl and for the Country Girl; for her mother and father, and for everybody else as well; but especially for the Country Girl herself. It will reach its aim if some father says, "Why, here now, somebody has written a book about my little gal there. I should not have thought it was worth while to make a book about her. Well, now, perhaps she is of some account. Guess I'll give her a little more schooling; guess I'll let her go to that institute she was asking to go to; guess I'll let her have some music lessons, or buy her a piano, or send her to college." Or if some mother says wistfully, "My daughter is going to have a better chance than I had!" Or if the Country Girl herself should say, "I see my opportunity and I will arise and fulfil my mission."

The book will reach its aim, too, if another thing should happen. This is the first book about the Country Girl. There have been tons of paper devoted to the farmer; reams filled on the farm woman; not a line for the girl. May this first book be followed by many, correcting its misconceptions, rectifying its mistakes, directing its enthusiasms into the best channels for the welfare of the six and three-quarters millions of Country Girls of this land! By that time there will be seven millions—unless in fact these six millions shall have run away to build their homes and rear their children in the hot, stuffy, unsocialized atmosphere of the town, leaving the happy gardens without the joyous voices of children, the fields without sturdy boys to work them, the farm homes without capable young women to—shall I say, to man them? No, let us say to woman them, to lady them, to mother them, and so to make them centers of wholesome interesting life that, if the girls do their part, shall be the very heart and fiber of the nation.

The author is sorry that she cannot write to all the Country Girls who have written her either through the questionnaire or through other means of communication in the groups with which she has been so happily associated; but she wishes that every Country Girl who reads this book would write to her (using the address below) and tell her where she thinks the book has spoken truly and where mistakenly. She trusts the judgment of the Country Girls of America absolutely, if they can but be induced to speak in unison and after careful thought.

Martha Foote Crow.

Tuckahoe, New York City

August, 1915.