T

THIS is a day when it is perilous to let other people do our thinking for us. To avoid forming one's own opinion proves in the end as risky as it was to evade the draft. Among the many new ideas that assail us no body of present-day doctrine attracts our attention more insistently than psychic research. It invades us from the lecture platform and from book lists that a decade ago would have seemed unbelievable. Serious publishers present a post-mortem Shakespeare and Mark Twain. Writers whose sanity we had thought unimpeachable fill pages of popular magazines with spiritist experiences. Ouija consumes hours of attention. One's closest friends engage in automatic writing. No openminded person can fail to be amazed by some of the phenomena indisputably proved. And yet what does one really think about it all? What is the precise import for one's own brain and soul of the New Revelation?

The subject is so challenging that we dare not leave it nebulous. If the dead are speaking to us, then it is our business to know how the fact should influence us. We might expect to be revolted or frightened or inspired, but to be indifferent would need explanation. It is well also that each of us should clarify his attitude as unemotionally as possible. If spiritism has a vital message, that message should be as imperative when we are happy as when we are bewildered by grief. We should study the matter when our heads are coolest, and should at all other moments abide by decisions reached thus quietly. Otherwise we might be like Saul, who, having "put away those that had familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of the land," still, when the Philistines threatened his security, had recourse to a witch-to receive, as it happened, cold comfort.

This being forced, each of us, to puzzle his own way out through the many tormenting problems of to-day makes us humble enough in regard to our conclusions, as being frankly personal, and yet this sincere self-doubt may be the beginning of wisdom, for if we each look deep enough into our own souls and report candidly enough what we see there we may discover that our personal reactions are far more general than we dreamed. If I, as an individual, struggle to formulate for myself my own answers to the questions, "What does psychic research mean for me? Precisely what assistance in vision or in energy does it give me for daily living?" I may perhaps discover that I am but one of many people who, after due examination, find themselves quietly closing away this new book of the dead in

BY WINIFRED KIRKLAND

obedience to some profound instinct of revulsion.

Instincts are curious things. Human instincts are as blind and as coercive as those of any planted seed. In fact, considering that we know as little about our mundane existence as a grain of wheat knows of its own chemistry, it hardly seems necessary to encroach upon our post-mundane adventure in order to find exploration worthy of our mettle. Our proudest reasoning processes amount to little more than the effort to explain impulses as yet too mysterious for our understanding. In general, we observe that the most powerful instincts are those that resist any menace to our due development. It is perhaps in accordance with some deep evolutional design that throughout all ages there has existed a deep repugnance toward the occult. It may be for the survival and the preservation of faculties won by the race at tragic cost that popular opinion has always relegated dealings with disembodied spirits to the misty area of black art and of all practices forbidden to the wholesome-minded. The charges of psychic students that other people dismiss their claims with mere scoffing are justified, and yet there may be a fundamental rightness in this unreasoned aversion.

The instinct against all psychic concerns is with many of us so keen that it needs perhaps examination and description before one attempts to explain and justify it by reason. Any study of intuition is necessarily introspective and personal, and yet when I put into words my own intuitions in regard to spiritism I trust that I may be expressing the sensations of many other people in this humble attempt to clarify to my own intelligence and vindicate to my own conscience my attitude toward the psychic.

Within these last years, when play ing with the occult has become so popular a pastime, most of us have made some experiments with the séance, automatic writing, table-moving, and ouija. For myself it is ouija that causes my sense of trifling with forbidden things to become acute. It is the equivocal point of view with which we toy with that little wooden triangle that does harm. The insincerity of our attitude is an affront to that self-reliance both of brain and of soul which we have toiled so painfully to attain. We half laugh, we half believe. We are subject to a childish, creepy sensa tion that possibly some post-mundane agency controls our fingers. We lightly appeal, "Come, spirits, talk to us," and appeal, "Come, spirits, talk to us," and yet, deep within, we are shamed by the realization that, if the air of the room were actually peopled by the august dead, how hideously flippant of us to

address them so carelessly. I feel after an hour with ouija as I should if I had chewed gum at "Parsifal "-not that I should have vulgarized "Parsifal," but myself.

The evolution of the brute into the man is not so much a cold scientific fact as a vivid and constant personal experience. Instinctively we know when we revert. Each of us realizes that his mentality and his morality are forces none too dependable in our blind strug gle upward. Assuredly when our brains are tackling some live problem in the laboratory or the library or the Stock Exchange we are conscious of the exhil aration of a mental effort; by contrast, does not each of us feel shamed by some subtle mental enervation when he plays with the ouija board? That one is not quite so sure-headed a person as before; is not that the sensation of each of us, if we are quite honest? To approach spiritism either in the mood of sincere superstition or of sincere science may not prove injurious to mentality, but the usual half-hearted admixture of both is an insult to the intellect. Surely, at its best human intelligence is still too flimsy a dependence for us to risk any retrogression.

The instinct that would protect the brain from the curious disintegration caused by the psychic is matched by that other still deeper instinct that warns against application to spirits for spiritual aid. I am surely not alone in experiencing an intuitive objection to going to ghosts for assistance in trouble. If at some moment of stress I deliber ately, sat down, and, holding a pencil loosely in my fingers, according to direction, appealed to some unknown, unbodied spirit to write out solutions for my problems and directions for my conduct, I feel that I should become by that act a smaller human being that I should be voluntarily following the road to shrinkage. When, by hav ing recourse to the dead for aid either intellectual or spiritual, I evade my responsibility to be a person, I feel that I have carelessly desecrated some shrine so deeply hidden within me that I do not discover it except when I violate it. Some potent intuition, rather than mere logic, testifies that the only spirit with whom the earth-bound may safely speak is that prisoned within our own fleshsurely thus prisoned for some purpose -to whose dignity we give scant rever ence. When we call upon the dead to help us in our earthly struggle, we are false to our own high destiny of bat tling bravely in the dark. Human indi viduality has been a force evolved so toilsomely from nothingness that we might naturally expect every instinct we possess to resist any reversion. If our personality is to survive in this

W

E farm women are grateful for the attention now being given us and for the untiring efforts of the Department of Agriculture to seek out just what is the real condition of farm homes. But somehow we feel that the emphasis is being wrongly placed; that mere questionnaires and statistics cannot half tell the story of how we live or what we think. House onditions on the farm are different from those in cities, and always will pe. But we think that women are not essentially different whether they live n the city or on a farm.

For instance, the Government survey bf farm homes conducted by the Department of Agriculture in its extenion work shows that the average armer's wife rises at five in the mornng, but it fails to say that she also goes to rest at 8:30 or 9 in the evening, thus assuring her the needed pours of sleep-and sleep it is after a ull day's work. But why emphasize A.M.? Is there anything really harmul in working in the early hours of the lay? Rather there is keen enjoyment of the beauty of the early morning when one is rested. Why should the farm woman adopt the rising hours of the city f earlier hours are more suited to her work?

The average working day is given as ten hours in winter and thirteen hours in summer, which surely, we all agree, is too long. Yet the emphasis should be placed upon taking time in the middle of the day for relaxation and recreation instead of suggesting later rising. One thing may be said of the long hours of work done on a farm: that the activities are so numerous and so varied that there is some rest in its variations.

An average of fifty-six per cent do some work in gardens, which may mean anything from planting and cultivating the entire crop to merely picking peas. What percentage of city women with gardens do not work in them?

Farm women, yes-" twenty-four per cent actually help in the fields with farm work during an average of 7.6 weeks a year." In this community such work means driving a team during haying, or in the fall helping to pick up potatoes surely not very arduous labor if one has the time. Farm women who do much hard field work are foreignborn women who have not yet come to our standard of living, and whose foreign city sisters are washing, keeping boardcity sisters are washing, keeping boarders, or working in factories.

Eighty-one per cent, we are told, have charge of the poultry raising. They raise poultry not for the pin-money

in it, but because they enjoy it. That is one of the most interesting occupations on the farm.

In referring to the lighting of farm homes and the use of electric power, it is stated that "seventy-nine per cent of the women cling to the old-fashioned lamps of wick and smoke, despite the fact that farm lighting systems are now available anywhere.' Let us for a minute consider what available means. In this locality a very good lighting system may be installed for $800. We will take the interest on the investment at 6 per cent, which is $48 a year. Depreciation, we will say, 5 per cent each year, which adds another $40. Then we must add some for running cost and upkeep, which easily will bring the cost of lighting to about $100 a year. Which does not take into account the farmer's time in the work of caring for it.

Is not that slightly out of propor tion to pay for lights? Power can be very effectively supplied by gasoline engines and many portable mantle lights have proved satisfactory for use on the average farm. Electricity as yet belongs to the city, where it can be maintained by the municipality at reasonable rates.

One great need on every farm is a complete bathroom, for no occupation is

dirtier during the summer and with the caring of stock. Yet it shows little realization of farm conditions to urge it lightly on every farm. In these Northern States consideration must be taken of deep freezing, the need of wellconstructed septic tanks, and much installation of plumbing in most farmhouses. In many farmhouses, as they are now built, the bathroom would be more a source of work and care than of benefit. It requires more water than is available in most houses, and its construction has not yet been studied out to meet farm conditions.

Ninety-two per cent of homes do a large part of their own sewing. Notice that no comment is made upon this as a means of shortening the hours of the poor farm women. Indeed, the report goes on to say that the "home demonstration agents have aided in the making and remodeling of thirty thousand garments." Horrors! It makes one blush to think of it. Farm women have too few new clothes as it is. We should not be urged to make over old garments or even make new clothing, but rather be shown the advisability of purchasing well-made ready-to-wear garments. The clothes question is indeed a large problem to the farm wife, for the sheer clothes worn in the city are not suitable for farm wear, and yet farm women do not wish to dress conspicuously different. If home garment-making is advisable, let it be done by city women.

Very kindly and painstakingly the Department of Agriculture has been demonstrating to us the processes of canning fruits and vegetables. Does that sound like shortening the farm women's hours? For years farmers' wives have been spending long, hot hours canning the surplus from the

"The Last to be Fed and the First to Starve "-this is the way a farmer characterized city people. He was talking with J. Madison Gathany. What he said shows the interest people in the cities have in the plight of the farmer. Mr. Gathany in his article tells of the effort of large food speculators to suppress the Government crop reports, and of the insidious attacks the upon Federal Farm Loan Act. The article will appear in the next issue.

orchard and garden, but it would seem better to urge the storage of root crops for winter vegetables and the utilizing of the surplus of such vegetables as peas, beans, and corn in feeding stock and poultry.

It is rather interesting to note that the Department of Agriculture, in advocating sending cream to creameries rather than churning butter at home, urged it primarily, not to spare women the extra work, but to save butter-fat by better methods.

Speaking of automobiles, sixty-two per cent of the farms use them. But in looking at the map showing the counties covered by the survey we wonder why the great, prosperous agricultural State of Kansas was scarcely touched by the survey. Kansas farmers have more automobiles than any other State, which would materially bring up the average.

No; cold statistics cannot give the impression of our life or what it means to us. Although work on a farm is hard

for women, yet we most of us enjoy the variety of work, have a vision of what we would like our farm to be, and consider that we are in business part nership with our husbands as no other class of women are. We may not have as much "higher life," but it is deeper. We like the farm for our childrenand some of us have children, questionnaires to the contrary notwithstanding. (By the way, what is the average size of the city family?)

Our children can romp and play over meadow, field, and wood lot; they find no end to the games in big barns, strawstacks, and the creek. They learn birds, flowers, trees, and field crops as naturally as learning to talk. What can compare with the interest to children in such special farm work as threshing, silo filling, wood buzzing, and sugar making? Besides, farm children have all the indoor games, the toys, books, and dolls of other children.

Whether we have a bathroom, elec tric lights, or aluminum cooking ware are individual problems. Roads, schools, and the mail are of National concern. What we farm women would like would be improved mail service, for, in spite of current belief, rural mail routing is very poorly planned, and on many days of snow, of rain, or of mud we do not get our mail. We would like better roads so that we could go back and forth quicker when we take our eggs to market or our cream to the creamery. But most of all we want better-far, far betterschools, in order that our children may have the best advantages in education that are available anywhere; that they may grow up to be well-educated, thinking, loyal American citizens, whether they choose to live in the city or in the country.

LL this loud and continuous de

Amand for hard exercise makes me

What this country needs is a rest. I rise in defense of the easy chair and the lounging robe.

If one is going to war, it is all very well to get tuned up physically in order that there may be an appropriate punch behind the bayonet. But I am speaking now for the business man and the professional man during times of peace. An observing visitor, W. L. George, the British novelist, says of us: in Europe know that Americans never go to bed." And he might truthfully have added that outside of their offices they rarely even sit down. With the disappearance of the horsehair lounge

"We

BY NEWTON A. FUESSLE

of the 1880's has vanished the timely nap. What modern divan is long enough to lay one's length upon and take one's ease?

There exists in this country to-day a widespread conspiracy against relaxation. A man goes it as hard as he can in his office, and then rushes away and hits it up like a maniac on the golf course, or plays tennis or squash or handball or medicine ball until he boils in every pore. It is the result of a wild singleness of aim, the same consisting of the dubious American trait of jamming into one's day the greatest possible amount of activity.

It's a rush for business, a rush for trains, a rush for a game of something,

and where is the man with the courage to indulge in a sport that really re laxes? You will travel far over wintry roads to find anybody playing that tranquil ice game called curling. It takes a Presidential candidate to dare indulge in the game of pitching the humble horseshoe. It takes a profes sional humorist like F. P. A. to confess even a casual acquaintance with anything as gentle as croquet.

Nobody wants to relax; nobody wants to ruminate, or drowse, or dream. We cultivate business on the golf course, solicit orders on furious motor drives on State highways, and go through violent motions in the unspeak able gymnasium because we don't know

how to sit. We dance ourselves weak and play our way into the jungles of fatigue. We wrestle with rims and change our tires when we might more profitably be doing nothing. We rush away on vacations with enough sport ing paraphernalia to burden our biceps and our backs to the breaking point. The fortnight of theoretical rest becomes a period of hard and destroying labor. We haven't sense enough to take a rest. Even a dog knows better.

The easy chair is caviar to the American crowds. It is anathema to the pushing, grinding crowds. Unless you can brag about your score at this or that, unless you can recount your hunting tales and speeding yarns, you talk in strange languages to your luncheon companions. We are a nation of sweating amateurs.

Even suburban gardening is recounted in terms of muscle-taxing heroics. Your commuter hurls himself out of bed at five, engages in violent combat with his garden, takes his cold plunge, and proceeds to his office weighed down by the habitual and lifelong weariness that has come to be the portion of our people.

We go solemnly through the artificial antics of a lot of setting-up exercises, instead of seeking refuge in the more simple and natural sitting-down exercise. We are not content unless we are tearing down tissue. There has got to be "something doing."

This National trait probably has its roots in the unyielding soil of the pious thrift of our forefathers whose warring with the wilderness caused them to frown upon all idleness and relaxation.

There

were so many Indians to fight, so much ground to be broken, so many acres to be tilled and crops to be harvested, that all life became one continuous chore, and the one with any inclination to loaf, a wicked person, fit only for treason, stratagems, and spoils.

BY THE ALSO-RANS"

Convinced that an idle brain was the devil's workshop, our educators gave themselves over to the glorification of athletics, and students have been goaded by frenzied "college spirit" into bucking football lines, running bases, leap ing hurdles, and all the other forms of absurd and straining muscular effort. I question the whole conduct of prep school and college athletics, not as an old fogey who has all but lived his days and who shrinks from the pace of "these terrible young people," but as one who has engaged not unsuccessfully in many of our approved and organized sports.

I have played end in high school football, and have competed on the track in allevents ranging from the 220-yard dash to the two-mile run. I have run, like an imposing ass, mile after mile around a dust-infested 26-lap indoor gymnasium track until it seemed that the heart must beat itself to pieces in the weary body. I have won a cross-country race from a large field of college runners, was one of a team of five that won the Western intercollegiate cup at cross-country, and even used to set pace for the then world's long-distance champion, James Lightbody, for the first mile of his indoor two-mile race.

While I must admit that there was more or less exhilarating fun in signal practice, in a few rounds of boxing, and in practice runs in the open country, I have never enjoyed any phase of competitive college sports, save perhaps the moment of winning. All the rest was torture-physical and mental.

The pretense of college medical authorities to keep the physically unfit out of competitive sports I regard as a joke. Men are rushed into the most violent of competition whose hearts and lungs ought to bar them. The strain undergone by the winner of a race is not to be compared with that undergone by the also-rans, outclassed from the crack of the gun, who finish only

because they have the will to finish, and whose vital organs are often torn and mangled during, the ordeal.

But the advertising values of athletic victories to a college are more important to our educators than the harm inflicted upon the majority of the competitors in the games.

The glorification of college athletics has done much to establish the habit of athletics. It has helped establish an illusion of life that makes harsh physical effort the thing, even after men go from the campus into business or the professions. I have clubbed golf balls into lost oblivion and have dallied with bowing alleys located all the way from Manhattan to the State of Washington. I have walked three hundred miles at a whack, with no companion but the winding road, and have motored three thousand miles at a time, and have enjoyed them both. But this whole popular enslavement to exercise is a snare and a mistake.

The vicious effect of it is this, that it tends to usurp all of one's waking hours and to cast them into activity, banishing that needed and delightful twilight zone of reverie and reflection that naturally intervenes between work and slumber. I hold it negligible that the strain of one's job plus the habitual daily strain of supplementary exercise has a shortening effect upon life. The span of a human life isn't so important.

But why should one wear himself out over a bouncing handball in a ridiculous court with gasping companions who mean little or nothing to him, while Thomas Hardy stands forgotten on the shelf? If it is companionship you're after, why seek it in the lockerroom of a musty gymnasium or among a crowd of commuters at the first tee, when the seductive riches of genius are ready to talk to you for the reaching for the right volume?

The one who invented the crawly