problem whether the Anglo-Saxon race can thrive in its new American home, or is this but an incident, an eddy in the great onward current of progress? I have no answer, but I know nothing more sad in our American life than the decay of these townlets.

Nowhere has the great middle class been so all-controlling, furnished so large a proportion of scientific and business leaders, been so respectable, so well combined industry with wealth, bred patriotism, conservatism, and independence. The farm was a great laboratory, tending, perhaps, rather more to develop scientific than literary tastes, cultivating persistency, in which country boys excel, if at the expense of versatility. It is, says Professor Brewer, the question with city parents what useful thing the children can do; while in the country, where they are in great demand on the farm, they are, in a sense, members of the firm. Evenings are not dangerous to morality, but are turned to good account, while during the rowdy or adolescent age the boy tendency to revert to savagery can find harmless vent in hunting, trapping, and other ways less injurious to morals than the customs of city life.

Some such training the heroes of '76 had; the independent conditions of communities like this was just the reverse of that of the South at the outbreak of the Rebellion; such a people cannot be conquered, for war and blockade would only drive them back to more primitive conditions, and restore the old independence of foreign and even domestic markets. Again, should we ever have occasion to educate colonists, as England is now attempting, we could not do so better than by reviving conditions of life like these.

I close by mentioning an interesting new educational experiment as a bright spot in this somber present, which was somewhat feebly but happily tried in Ashfield, as a result of the recently awakened interest in its own antiquities. A prominent citizen, once a teacher, has studied from sources largely

unprinted the history of the town, which connects it with the Revolution, and even the French and Indian wars, and, on the lines of old maps he has made of the original town surveys, gave an hour per week during part of a winter to teaching history from a local standpoint in the little academy, with its score of pupils, and adding many of the antiquities such as this paper has referred to, with free use of the museum, and all with excellent results. A village pastor, who is an excellent botanist, took the class a few times each year on excursions, and the older girls have gathered and pressed for him in a school museum all the Ashfield plants and grasses, on the basis of which he taught a little botany gratuitously. The doctor coöperated with them and talked on physiology and hygiene, and brought his microscope and other instruments. A student of an agricultural college has gathered all the Ashfield rocks and minerals and taught geology. He has gathered cabinets of the local animals, birds, eggs, butterflies, and insects, which a summer resident makes a basis of some instruction. A summer boarder was drafted in to teach drawing to all comers half a day per week. This experiment, in what I consider coöperative education, begins at home, with what is nearest and often despised. The local Faculty about the teacher give but little time, but their teaching is full of interest and stimulus. They strengthen the teacher whom they really guide, and bring home and school nearer together. This new curriculum is without expense, and altogether may prove a suggestive novelty. To-day old domestic industries of the age of the tinder box and stone milk pan. and niddy-noddy are taught by a specialist, Miss H. B. Merrill, to history classes from the city schools in turn in a central museum of American antiquities in Milwaukee.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brand, John. Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain. G. Bell & Sons, London, 1882. 3 vols.

Claflin, Mary B. Brampton Sketches: Old-Time New England Life. T. Y. Crowell & Co., New York, 1890. 158 pages.

Cockayne, Oswald. Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft (published under direction of the Master of the Rolls). Longmans (and others), London, 1864-1866. 3 vols.

De Gaspé, P. A. Canadians of Old (translated by Georgiana M. Pennée). G. and G. E. Desbarats, 1864. 331 pages.

Earle, Alice Morse. Child Life in Colonial Days. Macmillan, New York, 1899. 418 pages.

Earle, Alice Morse. Customs and Fashions in Old New England. Scribner, 1893. 387 pages.

Earle, Alice Morse. Home Life in Colonial Days. Macmillan, New York, 1898. 470 pages.

Field, Eugene. A Little Book of Profitable Tales. Scribner, New York, 1890. 286 pages.

Mooney, James. "The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees," Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1885–1886. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1891.

Newell, William Welles. The Games and Songs of American Children. New and enlarged edition. Harper & Brothers, New York, 1903. 242 pages.

Wilkins, Mary E. A Humble Romance and Other Stories. Harper & Brothers, New York, 1887. 436 pages.

Wilkins, Mary E. In Colonial Times: the Adventures of Ann the Bound Girl of Samuel Wales of Braintree in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. Lothrop Publishing Company, Boston, 1899. 115 pages.