If Youre Going to Live in the Country | Page 4

and all
the other recommendations of scientific child rearing. Still the little
arms and legs continue to be spindling. Tonics and cod liver oil fail to
get rid of that pinched look, the concomitant of too little sunlight and
too many hours indoors. In desperation such a family betakes itself to
the country. The children weather tan. They respond to the more placid
life and gradually gain the much sought after hardiness. Nature has
been the physician without monthly bills for house or office treatments.
The children are not the only ones who gain. Healthy adults renew their
energy and crave activity. Here opportunity lies close at hand. It may
be swinging a golf club or going fishing. It may be such unorganized
methods of stretching muscles and increasing breathing as pushing a
lawn mower, raking leaves or weeding the delphinium border. All these
sports and homely out-of-door duties and pleasures are nearby, many of
them just the other side of the front door. Those classed as sports may
require a country club membership but even this is on a more modest
scale.
In fact, all potent are the economies made possible by leaving city or
closely built suburb. House and land, either bought or rented, comes
cheaper and is more ample. Along with this basic saving there are a
number of others that help to leave something from the family income
at the end of the year. Clothes last longer in the country and wardrobe
requirements are simpler. Similarly, there is a distinct decrease in the
money spent for amusements. When the nearest moving picture house
is five miles away it is easy to stay at home. Going to the movies is not
a matter of just running around the corner and so done automatically

once or twice a week. Then there are such things as doctor's bills.
While sickness, like taxes, visits every family no matter where it lives,
we have found that we actually have less need of medical care living in
the sticks than we did in town. Also the charges for competent care by
both doctors and dentists are lower.
For the family inclined to delve in the soil, a definite saving can be
accomplished by tending a vegetable garden, raising small fruits and
berries, and even maintaining a hen roost. Some people (I would I
could honestly include myself) have a gift for making things grow and
getting crops that are worth the work that has gone into them. Likewise
there is such a thing as possessing a knack with that unresponsive and
perverse creature, the hen. Possibly good gardening and an
egg-producing hen-yard are the result of willingness to take infinite
pains but, out of my disappointments and half successes, I am more
inclined to hold that it is luck and predestination. So, I have reduced
agricultural activities sharply, but I do know families where each fall
finds cellar shelves groaning under cans of fruits and vegetables,
products of the garden, and foretelling distinct economies in purchases
of canned goods or fresh vegetables.
One of the largest single savings that country life makes possible is
elimination of private school tuition. Theoretically city public schools
are good enough for anybody's children. Actually most good
neighborhoods have an undesirable slum just around the corner and the
public school is for the children of both. So, many city-dwelling
families, not from snobbishness but because they do not want their
young hopefuls to acquire slum manners and traits, dig deep into their
bank accounts and send their children to private schools.
Seldom is this necessary in the country, especially if the educational
system is investigated beforehand. Instead, the children start in a good
consolidated graded school, proceed through the local high school, and
are prepared for college with all the cost of tuition included in the tax
bill that must be paid anyway. The children are none the worse for this
less guarded education. They are, in fact, benefited for they have a
democratic background that makes later life easier.

Besides these creature comforts and financial gains, there are the
intangibles. Chief of these is that indescribable something, country
peace. All the family responds to it. It is impossible to maintain the
highly-keyed, nervous tension that characterizes city life when the
domestic scene is surrounded by open fields or an occasional bit of
woodland. The placid calm soothes frayed nerves and works wonders
in restoring balance and perspective toward family and business
problems. The harassed come to realize the inner truth of "God's in his
heaven, all's right with the world."
Along with this, the family transplanted from the city gradually comes
to know the genuine joys of much simpler pleasures. Separated from
the professional recreations that beckon so engagingly in cities and the
larger towns, adults and children