The ordinary village fails to get the best out of life. A candid examination of average boys or girls of the town or country, brought up without the influence of outside advantages, too often reveals the fact that they are not, in refinement, in resources or in thought, the equal of city young people. There is a painful feeling that they are narrow. Indeed, they feel this themselves, and complain that they have “no opportunities.” At the same time the narrow life does not shield them from temptation, and there are almost as many young men in America going to ruin under the narrowing influences of country and town life as in the whirl of cities.

Among women the influence is evident. They are, it is true, largely free from the temptations of frivolity, extravagance and dissipation, but they are subject to temptations of no light weight. Their few interests lead them to gossiping, prying and criticising. Lines of class distinction are drawn so painfully tight that their lives become narrow in sympathies and associations. Very largely they lack independence of spirit to help them dare untried lines of conduct. Many of our American villages and “corners” are the most trying places in the land in which to live. Few dare to try improvements, enthusiasm meets little or no response, ideas travel slowly. Village life looks ideal to one wearied by the rush and wickedness of a city, but there is in it a peculiarly benumbing influence which is all the more difficult to contend against because so silent in its action. Yet there are two of the best conditions for high living in the surroundings of town and country. There are leisure and quiet. Anything which will impregnate this rare life with enthusiasm and energy will furnish the happiest conditions for noble action and steady growth.

It is not an easy problem for a reformer in such a locality, but we believe Mrs. Campbell in her “What-to-do Club” offers a solution which will rarely fail among girls and women. “The What-to-do Club” is an unpretending story, but it has a practical grip on this question. It introduces us to a dozen or more village girls of varying ranks. One has had superior opportunities; another exceptional training; two or three have been “away to school;” some are farmers’ daughters; there is a teacher, two or three poor self-supporters—in fact, about such an assemblage as any town between New York and Chicago might give us. But while there is a large enough company to furnish a delightful coterie, there is absolutely no social life among them. The differences in their opportunities they have exaggerated until they feel that their interests are as unlike as those of Fijis and Bostonians. They look at each other with curiosity merely, and all of them are bored by the dullness of their lives. Mrs. Campbell puts a wise woman into their midst. This woman’s experience has taught her that the barrier between women of different sets is largely their ignorance of each other, their belief that they have nothing in common. She finds something in common for these girls. By a little tact, exerted at a village gathering, she interests them in herself. A second stroke of policy finds them gathered in her parlor and she clinches her work by giving them an insight into practical employments—not pleasures, mind you—but work, for women at home. The interest excited quickens them all. They become alert, capable, quick-witted, and suddenly see in each other much of which they had never before dreamed. The false barriers between women invariably fall before a common interest. Show them how strangely their minds and lives are alike and the sympathy of similarity makes friends of them. So the girls of the “What-to-do Club” found, at any rate. Their meetings became voyages of discovery. Their discoveries were El Dorados to many a one of their number perplexed by the want of pin-money, or worse still, of bread-money. Simple, practical, at-home occupations for leisure hours was the first study, and it is marvelous what a number they found. One young lady undertakes strawberry culture, and in a single season clears, off a quarter of an acre, $154.65. Better still, her vigorous out-of-door life transforms a pair of pale, hollow cheeks until they are rosy and plump, and awakens healthful interest which soon makes a happy heart out of a very discontented one. A half acre put into small fruits, currants, raspberries and blackberries, opens the way for an active young philanthropist to start a fund for a future kindergarten for her father’s employÉs. It does more. It opens the young lady’s eyes to the dignity of work, puts a bond of sympathy between her and the people who work for her, and strengthens the common sense of her whole family. Our strawberry girl tries poultry and finds it the most delightful of employments. It pays her, too, one season’s work yielding a clear profit of $86.56 on an expenditure of $73.40. Bees, with their fascinating history, their exciting family affairs, their industrious honey making, and their clear, unfailing profit came in for one young Busybody’s attention, and in a single season this young merchant clears $113.94. One girl tries silk worms and sends to the club this report of her summer’s work:

One of the best discoveries which the club makes is of the possibilities in fruit canning, jelly making, and, best of all, fruit evaporating. Like “Dorothy” of the “club,” when we read of the wonders of the latter we burned to “live in an orchard and evaporate everything that grows.” How wonderful it seemed to these girls to whom fruit preserving had been bounded by the limits of the fruit closet and the demands of the table, to put up jelly for market, to “take in” canning for people too busy to do their own, to dry fruit in that wonderful evaporator, which would sell in any market in the country.

It is not strange that these new ideas put into their lives new possibilities. It showed them that there was something to do at home, something which was more than a paying employment. For these out-of-door interests are more. They are health-giving, awakening pursuits. The girl that engages in such enterprises wins more than a few dollars; she cultivates the business faculty and arouses a dormant independence which makes a new creature out of her. This new interest in the lives of Mrs. Campbell’s girls gave them an interest, at first in purely money making enterprises, but it soon knit them into friends. Their friendship spread until they found themselves reading, studying, planning, as one body. The influence in the story energizes the community. It is, perhaps, quite possible that in a real club we might meet with more discouragements, but it is impossible that we fail entirely.

Town and country need more improving, enthusiastic work to redeem them from barrenness and indolence. Our girls need a chance to do independent work, to study practical business, to fill their minds with other thoughts than the petty doings of neighbors. A What-to-do Club is one step toward higher village life. It is one step toward disinfecting a neighborhood of the poisonous gossip which floats like a pestilence around localities which ought to furnish the most desirable homes in our country.