ntaining the standards of its people. Of course the past may be one
of which no one is proud and which they may prefer to forget, but this
is a spur to new endeavor as it is to a family to attain a new status.

Community life is likely to be at a low ebb where there is but little
knowledge of, or interest in, the history of its past. I was recently
impressed with this in visiting a small inland community, which was not
without many events of interest in its earlier development. I failed,
however, to find any connected records of the community's past or any of
its people who know much of its history. So far as I could learn there
had been few celebrations or community activities for many years and
there was a general feeling that the community had been on the down
grade and needed redirection. It seemed to me that one of the things
which might arouse community loyalty in this instance would be for its
people to clean up some of the old neighborhood cemeteries where many of
the early pioneers lie buried, and which are now grown up and unkept.

Then I think of another community where every few years on important
anniversary events the history of an organization or of the community as
a whole is related and often published in the local press. Its past has
no more striking events than that of the locality last mentioned, but
these people have pride in their community and their loyalty is renewed
on these anniversary occasions.

Miss Emily F. Hoag[11] has recently given a good picture of how the
history of their community has been made to live in the hearts of the
people of Belleville, New York, through their loyalty to the old Union
Academy, and she has given a fine example of how a community may be
brought to a realization of the contribution which it has made to the
life of the state and nation.

Only by a knowledge of the community's history can the nature and origin
of the attitudes of its people be understood. A generation or two ago,
perchance, there was a quarrel between two families which was carried
into the school meeting, and to this day two factions have persisted.
The attitudes of the people in many a progressive town may be directly
traced to the influence of some outstanding leaders--a teacher,
minister, or doctor, perhaps--long since gone to their reward. A village
fire, the coming of a railroad or its deflection to a nearby town, a
bank failure, a prohibition crusade, the establishment of a library are
bu