The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1894-02-13
SOUND SENSE FOR GIRLS.
Especially Country Girls Who Sigh for
City Life.

49, 0'
Right to the point is the following
readable little article from tie New
York Sun: We all know the girl who
writes: "I want to come to the city
and earn my living; what chance have
II" She writes us from TimbuctoO
and from the country town where we
used to live ourselves. She can do
"most anything, you know" to earn
money, from painting a plaque to writ
ing editorials on the eccentricities Of
the tariff, and the town she was born
and brought up in, where everybody
calls her by her first name and likes
her, where she has a sunny little
all to herself and a new gown when
ever she cries for it, won't hold her
any longer. Now here is an answer to
that girl that a woman wrote who
knew what she was talking about.
There should be a special act of Con
gress passed providing that this letter
should be printed, framed and hung
in every country school house, every
village seminary, every small city
high school. The woman's name is
Martha Everts Holden, and the ambi
tious girl Of whom she writes had writ
ten to her:
Il felt Ike posting an immediate
answer and saying Stay where you
are 1 didn't do it though, for I knew
it would be useless. The girl is bound
to come, and come she will. And she
will drift into a third-rate boarding
house, than which if there is anything
meane let us pray. And if she is
pretty she will have to carry herself
Ike snow on high hills to avoid con
tamination. If she is confiding and
innocent the fate of that highly perse-
cuted heroine of old fashioned romance,
| Clarissa Harlowe, is before her. I fshe
is homely the doors of opportunity are
firmly closed against her. If she is
smart she will perhaps succeed in
earning enough money to pay her
board bill and have sufficient left over
to indulge in the m%addening extrava-
gance of an occasional paper Of pins or
a ball ,.of tape. What if, after hard
labor and repeated failure, she does
secure something like success9 No
sooner will she do 50 than up will step
some dapper youth who will beckon
her over the border into the land where
troubles just begin. She won't know
how to sew or bake or make good
| coffee, for such arts are liable to be
| overlooked when a girl makes a career
for herself; and SO love will gallop
away over the hills like a riderless
steed end happiness will flare like a
light in a windy night.
ooh! no, my little country maid,
stay where you are if you have a home
and friends. Be content with fishing
for troutin the brook rather than crui5
ing a stormy ocean for whales, A great
city is a cruel place for young lives.
It takes them as the cider press takes
Juicy apples, sun kissed and favored
with the breath OF the hill, and brushes
them into pulp. There is a spoonful of
Juice in each apple, but cider is cheap.
The girl Of whose success you read is
nine cases out Of ten tie girl with a
friend at court who gives her the op-
portunity to show what she can do.
Without such g. friend the path Of the
lone girl in a great city is a briery
uphill track"
A man travelling one of the ga wmill
| roads In Dooly county, Ca, AYERS that
| the road was so crooked that he met