in behalf of rural life in general.
There are scores of games and sports, from marbles to football, which
should receive attention. In recent years the social mind, in all
sports, seems to be directed to the _result_, the winning or losing,
instead of to the game, as a game, and the fun of it all. True
sportsmanship should be revived and cultivated. There is no reason why
there should not be found in every neighborhood, and especially at every
school center, all kinds of plays and games, each in its own time and
place and having its own patronage--marbles, tops, swings, horseshoes,
"I spy," anti-over, pull-away, prisoner's base, tennis, croquet, volley
ball, basketball, skating, coasting, skiing, baseball, and football.
Horizontal bars, turning pole, and other apparatus should be provided in
every playground. In the social centers, if the boys can be organized as
Boy Scouts, and the girls as Camp-Fire Girls, good results will ensue.

Many more plays and games will suggest themselves, and those for girls
should be encouraged as well as those for boys. All the aspects of rural
life can thus be made most enjoyable. It is often well to introduce and
cultivate one game at a time, letting it run its course, something like
a fever, and then, at the psychological moment, introduce and try out
another. To introduce too many at one time would not afford an
opportunity for children to experience the rise and fall of a wave of
enthusiasm on any one, and this is quite important. Usually some
direction should be given to play, but this direction should not be
suppressive, and should be given by a leader who understands and
sympathizes with child nature.

=Inventiveness in Rural Life.=--In the city, where everything is
manufactured or sold ready-made, a person simply goes to the store and
buys whatever he needs. In the country this cannot be done, and one is
driven by sheer necessity to devise ways and means of supplying his
needs, himself. He simply has to invent or devise a remedy. Necessity is
the mother of invention.

It is really better for boys and girls in the country if their parents
are compelled to be frugal and economical. If children get anything and
everything they wish, merely for the asking, they are undone; they
become weak for lack of self-exertion, self-expression, and invention;
they become dissatisfied if everything is not coming their way from
others. They become selfish and careless. Having tasted of the best,