for
the family to set apart one or two evenings a week to be given to
reading of the plays by the greatest poet and dramatist. Several plays
would do for one winter and the whole thirty-six of them would last for
several years, and then one could begin again at the beginning and read
them over with renewed interest and understanding. Thus the farm home
could have a theater of its own in the warm sitting-room while the soft
snow covered the acres all about, hushing every disturbing sound.

Perhaps that lofty master of the dramatic art should not be the first
one mentioned. It is quite easy to understand that some Country Girl
will think this poet to be hard reading for one who has not had the
chance to go through high school. For those who are timid about taking a
bold leap into the field of more advanced literature there are many
plays made from our present-day lives that are easy to read and to
enact, plays adapted to any number of people, plays that may include
father, mother, and the children down to the smallest; and there are
many kinds of tableaux and smaller plays that can be represented on the
lawn of the farmhouse or in the kitchen after the work is done.

Of course the greatest thing of all would be to make one's own plays out
of one's own circumstances or out of the things that one is thinking
about every day. In making a play one must first choose a hero or a
heroine; then imagine something that this hero wishes to do. After that
some great difficulty is to be planned that he must meet, some
opposition he must overcome. In constructing a drama you tell the story
of a struggle or endeavor of this kind, putting it all into the words
the people speak and nothing at all into any account of the action, the
gesture, or the dress. All those things must be seen to by the people
who take the parts. And the background may be selected that will come
nearest to being the right and fit one for the people and action
suggested by the words of the play.

There is an infinite possibility before those who will make the attempt
to let the playing of plays have part in the amusements in the farm
home. All ages can be suited with plays, the simple ones for the
smallest children, the more complex and finished for the older ones, the
great ones for the oldest and most educated among the members of the
family. As drama is one expression of the play spirit (using the word
here in its meaning of "recreation"), and the satisfaction