the Extension Department of the various state
institutions. Recently the states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North
Dakota have entered into an arrangement whereby they will furnish any
rural or urban community of these states with good lecturers at a very
small consideration. Excellent lectures can be secured in this way on a
great variety of subjects, including those most interesting to rural
communities and most helpful in all phases of farm life. These might be
secured in the winter season when there is ample time and leisure for
all to attend.

=Dramatic Performances.=--In the social centers where the conveniences
admit, simple dramatic performances might be worked up or secured from
the outside. It is a fact that life in some country communities is not
sufficiently cheered through the agency of the imagination. The tendency
is for farmers and farmers' families to live a rather humdrum existence
involving a good deal of toil. On the secluded farms during the long
winter months, there is not much social intercourse. It has been
asserted that the isolation and solitariness in sparsely settled
districts are causes of the high percentage of insanity in rural and
frontier communities. It is good for the mental and physical health of
both old and young to be lifted, once in a while, out of the world of
reality into that of the imagination. All children and young people like
to play, to act, to make believe. This is a part of their life, and it
is conducive to their mental and social welfare to express themselves in
simple plays or to see life in its various phases presented dramatically
by others.

=A Musical Program.=--If the teacher is a leader he will either be able,
himself, to arrange a musical entertainment, or he will secure some one
who can and will do so. All, it is contended, can learn to sing if they
begin early enough; and there is probably no better mode of
self-expression and no better way of waking up people emotionally and
socially than to engage them in singing. The importance of singing, to
secure good and right emotional attitudes toward life and mankind, is
indicated in the saying, "Let me make the songs of a nation and I care
not who makes her laws." The importance of singing is recognized to a
much greater extent in foreign countries, notably in Germany, than in
America. In Germany all sing; in America, it is to be regretted, but few
sing. There should be a real renaissance in music throughout the