Jasper County Democrat, Volume 4, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 August 1901 — OFF TO THE COUNTRY. [ARTICLE]

OFF TO THE COUNTRY.

Some Little Ones Who Really Preferred the City. From stifling city streets to green fields and whispering woods is a change one cannot imagine other than welcome, especially to a child. Indeed, it is a great thing for the happy hundreds of poor children w ho are now enabled every season to enjoy the blessed country week, or even a country day. Yet sometimes the hostesses of these city children, at the very time they gather from their careless chatter how much Is lacking in their lives, learn also of unexpected compensations. There is so* much for the poor in the daily drama of the streets, the intimate neighborliness of the crowded tenement! “It’s so awful quiet here,” wailed one little girl, on a rainy day, “and I can’t bear them frogs at night! Nobody told me the. country was going to be sad.” Another child, sickly and pining from bad food and worse air, was yet so homesick in a charming seaside cottage that it had been almost decided to send her home, when the mistress bethought her to take the child into her own room at night. Even then she wanted her cot pulled so close to the lady’s bed that the two touched, but that concession permitted, she became contented, and soon flourished like a flower. She admitted that she “just couldn't stand the lonesomeness” of being by herself at night, although she was uelther frightened nor nervous. At home, she explained, there were three bods in the room with three children apiece in two of them, and four in the third—and she missed the company. Still another child, picnicking for the day in the wild grounds of a beautiful villa, fell into confidential < hat with her hostess before leaving. She had never seen so lovely a place, and she had had a splendid time. “But,” she asked, wonderingly. “do you really like to live here all summer? .lust trees—and trees—and trees—and no folks?” “I don’t like fields without any paths in ’em and fences without any gates,” sniffed a little boy with a scraped knee, disgustedly; but he was happily unique in his opinion, “I say, gimme parks!” Beautiful our parks may be and loved deservedly of the children; but it is hard not to feel that a child has lost one of Its natural rights that does not at some time have the “real country” to run wild In, grow brown In. and learn to love.—Youth’s Companion.