of her every effort, helping the daughter to be faithful in her attendance at meetings and giving her instruction and encouragement in winning her honors. But the part of the Camp Fire mother has in many places become larger and more definite than this. Mothers are giving lessons to the Camp Fire as a whole in the special forms of handcraft or homecraft in which they happen to excel. Of course the ambition of the Camp Fire girl is to learn not only to do the things but to do them by the best modern methods. The mother who has studied scientifically the problem of marketing has something too valuable to be ignored in the training of the group. The one who is an expert seamstress or who delights in fine laundering can give the girls a profitable forenoon, if not a whole series of lessons in her specialty.

Camp Fire is bringing to mothers the vision that romance and beauty are not dead in themselves, and that except as they themselves can live joyously, entering into life with the enthusiasm of youth, they can not either understand or be understood by their children.

This situation is bringing about a discovery that the capacity for these things has not died out during the years; it has only been repressed and now it bursts forth afresh, the enthusiasm of youth backed by the strength of mature experience. This is the kind of leadership the children long for and love. This they understand. And through this they are shaped in character and ideals, shaped not by the forces of external compulsion but by those of deepest desire. The

Camp Fire mother is venturing into unknown deeps, and reveling in her act with something of the shy, pleased, free feeling of the mother who takes off her shoes and stockings, and goes wading with the children in the brook, enjoying it every bit as much as the children themselves. .

One Guardian has written, "I want you to know that in one instance at least your Camp Fire has done as much for the Guardian as for the girls. You have given her a purpose in life, and seventeen dear daughters to mitigate the ever-present loss of the little girl who left me. I never would have known one of them if it were not for the beautiful Camp Fire idea."

Do you see? There is a great deal of pent-up motherhood in the world, motherhood that has been denied its natural expression, or that is large enough to reach out to more than its own small brood, if the chance were given. Girls that have lost their mothers, girls that never had any in the real sense, girls whose mothers are too burdened to give them all the mothering they need-we have them always with us. Camp Fire brings the mother-love and hungry heart together. Itself a mother's conception, wrought out while striving to give her own daughters the preparation for womanhood that she wished them to have, Camp Fire is the expression of the Mother Spirit brooding over society and the world.

* By permission of "Wohelo," Camp Fire Girls, inc.

The

66

NOT TOO LATE

BY KATHARINE M'DOWELL RICE

'Why do I act so, I wonder?" Agatha frankly asked herself. "I'm just as cross as I can be. Marion, come back," she called. "Come back and I'll do it."

But the little feet in the unbuttoned shoes had pattered far away.

"I believe I'm ill-natured toward everybody in the house," said Agatha as she went back to her seat by the window. "I really believe I am. Why, actually," she acknowledged a moment later, and her cheeks began to burn, "I have been impatient with everybody in the family, and just since I've come in from school!"

Agatha rapidly reviewed the last two hours. Her mother had asked her to find a piece of twine in the string-bag, and Agatha had answered, "Oh, I do hate to go to that old string-bag; the things always come tumbling out!" And her mother had said " Agatha !" in a reproachful tone, the remembrance of which was making Agatha say to herself now, "I wish mamma wouldn't say ' Agatha' to me that way. I always think of it after I get to bed, and it makes me feel bad.”

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Why, I was cross to mamma even before that," she went on with almost a start, when I snatched my let

ter from her and said she

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needn't have opened it.

And then after lunch when mamma asked me if I didn't want to hear Aunt Fanny read some poetry, I

said, 'I don't care for poetry,' and mamma said, 'I think you must be tired, dear.' Mamma is always thinking I must be tired when I act that way, but I wasn't tired; I was just ill-tempered. I'm a crosspatch; that's what I am. Dick said I was when I took my paints away from him—and I am.”

She had gotten up and was looking out of the window. Down on the sidewalk Marion was dancing along at Judith's side. She had her doll with her and was evidently going to the park. Agatha knocked on the window, but they did not hear her.

"Isn't she just the sweetest little thing in the world!" said Agatha with a growing lump in her throat as she watched the tiny shoes that somebody had buttoned carry the small sister out of sight. "And to think I told her she was big enough to button her own shoes, and that she ought to be ashamed to come to me!"

Agatha went down to the library. Mamma smiled a welcome, and motioned to a seat at her side.

"Wait a moment, will you, please, Fanny?" said mamma. “I want to explain to Agatha that these verses were written by a man named William Cowper, who was looking at his mother's portrait as he wrote them."

Then Aunt Fanny went on with the poem where she had stopped when Agatha came in,—

May I but meet thee on that peaceful shore,

and Agatha listened to all that followed with intense interest.

When the poem was finished, and all were saying how beautiful it was, and thanking Aunt Fanny for reading it, Agatha said:

"And did his mother come back to him?"

"Why,

Come back to him!" echoed Aunt Clara. didn't you understand, child, that his mother was dead?"

"Dead!" cried Agatha. "Why, he spoke of her going away somewhere- somewhere in a ship. Oh, mamma! she was not dead?" And she turned beseechingly to her mother.

"Yes, dear," said mamma, putting an arm tenderly about her little daughter, for Agatha was crying.

"A child is too emotional to hear such things," said Aunt Clara. "We should have read something lighter after Agatha came in."

"Oh, no," said Agatha, looking up through her tears. "I think it was beautiful, Aunt Clara. But are you all sure that she was dead?"

"Yes. See here, Agatha ;" and Aunt Fanny read aloud, pointing to the line as she did so,

My mother, when I learned that thou wast dead,

and Agatha's eyes followed the words.

"That part was all read before Agatha came in I remember it now," said her mother.

"I never knew anything so sad," said the little girl earnestly, so earnestly that the aunts smiled at each other, and Aunt Clara motioned to Aunt Fanny to put away the book.