Part 12 (2/2)
We should be interested to record these events of the rural country, as well as the events that are a.s.sociated with the congested city. Persons of quickened intelligence will not live contentedly in the outer country if it provides nothing more than subsistence. Every new memorial in the farming country is one additional reason for people to live there.
The open country as well as the city has a history; but one would not discover the fact from monuments that he may see.
It may not be possible now to erect elaborate monuments far in the country to commemorate historical events, but records may be made, and it is at least possible to roll up a pile of stones.
_Improvement societies._
Of late years there has sprung up a line of societies in villages and small cities whose province it is to create public sentiment for the betterment of the place in general good looks, and which, for lack of a better name, are generally collectively known as ”village improvement societies.” These organizations have had much effect in making the villages attractive. Their influence extends far and wide, but the organization itself in any case ought to take in all the surrounding territory, with the purpose to secure a cooperative action between town and country (page 122). The entire region, not city or town alone, should be organized.
In many rural communities, there could well be an open-country improvement society; or an organization might be formed, from the church or otherwise, to care for a particular interest, as the school ground or the cemetery. The average country cemetery particularly needs attention.
The care of all the public or semi-public property of a towns.h.i.+p or a neighborhood is somebody's responsibility, and this responsibility should be recognized in organization. The pride of the community could be greatly stimulated if a group of people should a.s.sociate to look after roadsides, lake sh.o.r.es and river banks, waste places, deserted and dilapidated buildings, weeds, raw spots, paths, dangerous places, mosquito ponds, breeding places of insects, stray dogs, horse sheds, trees, birds, wild flowers, telegraph and telephone depredations, cemeteries, church grounds, school grounds, almshouse grounds, picnic grounds, historic places, patriotic events, bits of good scenery, and to give advice on lawns, back-yards and barn-yards, advertising signs.
_Entertainment._
All persons seem to be agreed that more entertainment and recreation should be provided for country residents; but it does not follow that vaudeville, and the usual line of moving pictures, and the traveling concert would add anything really worth while, although these are often recommended by town folk. The Board Walk kind of pageant may very well be left at the sea-sh.o.r.e.
But we certainly need entertainment that will help country people over the hard and dry places, and raise their lives out of monotony. The guiding principles are two: an entertainment that shall express the best that there is in country life; one that shall set the people themselves at work to produce it, rather than to bring it in bodily from the outside.
I would not eliminate good things merely because they come from the outside, and no one would deny the countryman the touch with any of the masterpieces; but I am speaking now of a form of effort that shall quicken an entire country district and leave a permanent impression on it. I would rather leave the situation as it is than to introduce the meaningless performances of the city thoroughfare and the resorts.
The movement to provide new and better sports, games, and general recreation is now well under way, and I do not need to explain it here; but two things ought to begin to receive attention: music and drama.
The _music spirit_ seems to be dying out in the country. I hear very little joyous song there, even though the people may be joyous. The habit of self-expression in song and music needs much to be encouraged in home and school and grange and church. I think the lack is in part due to the over-mastering influence of professional town music, and in part to the absence of study of simple country forms. Simplicity is not now the fas.h.i.+on in music. The single player with a simple theme and the single singer with a melodious and untrilled strain are not much heard at gatherings now. Some of the best singing I hear is now and then out among the folk,--a simple direct song as plain and sweet as a bird's note. I hope we shall not lose it.
A _drama_ of some kind is very much needed for country districts. It should be a new form, something in the way of representing the end of the planting, the harvest, the seasons, the leading crops, the dairy, the woods, the history and traditions of the neighborhood or the region.
Many of the pieces should be acted out of doors, and they should be produced chiefly by local talent. Such simple plays for the most part need yet to be written, but the themes are numerous. Why not have a festival or a generous spectacle of Indian corn, and then fill the whole occasion full of the feeling of the corn? As pure entertainment, this would be worth any number of customary theatricals, and as a means of bringing out the talent of the community it would have very positive social value. The traveling play usually leaves nothing behind it.
The themes for short, simple, and strong dramatic presentation are almost numberless,--such episodes and events, for example, as the plowing, the reaping, the husking, the horse-shoeing, the hay-stacking, the wood-chopping, the thres.h.i.+ng, the sugaring, the raising of the barn, the digging of the well, the herding of the cattle, the felling of the tree, the building of the church, the making of the wagon, the bridging of the creek, the constructing of the boat, the selling of the farm, the Indians, the settlers, the burst of spring, the dead of winter, the season of bloom, the heyday of summer.
We do not sufficiently appreciate how widespread and native is the desire to dramatize. The ritual of fraternal orders is an ill.u.s.tration.
We see it in the charades of evening parties. The old school ”exhibition” made a wonderful appeal. Every community likes to see its own people ”take parts.” At nearly every important grange meeting, and at other country meetings, some one must ”recite,” and the recitation usually has characters, situations, and ”take-offs.” It is too bad that we do not have better literature to put in the hands of these reciters; in the meantime, I hope that the custom will not die out.
One who has seen the consummate Pa.s.sion Play at Oberammergau must have had the thought impressed on him that there is much latent talent among the country folk, and also that it is much worth the while of a community to develop this talent. Aside from its transcendent theme, this stupendous play appeals to the world because of its simplicity and directness and because of its reality, for these are the very kind of folk that might have taken part in the mighty drama had the Great Master lived in Oberammergau.
The nativeness of the play impresses one. The very absence of so much that we a.s.sociate with the ordinary drama gives the play an appeal,--the absence of the studied stride and strut, of the exaggerated make-ups, and of the over-doing of the parts. The play is grounded in the lives of the people in the community.
We cannot expect another place to become an Oberammergau, but it is possible for something good to come out of any spot. This thought is vividly expressed by W. T. Stead in his account of the Pa.s.sion Play:
”As I write, it is now two days after the Pa.s.sion Play. The crowd has departed, the village is once more quiet and still. The swallows are twittering in the eaves, the blue and cloudless sky over-arches the amphitheater of hills. All is peace, and the whole dramatic troupe pursue with equanimity the even tenor of their ordinary life. Most of the best players are woodcarvers; the others are peasants or local tradesmen. Their royal robes or their rabbinical costumes laid aside, they go about their ordinary work in the ordinary way as ordinary mortals. But what a revelation it is of the mine of latent capacity, musical, dramatic, intellectual, in the human race, that a single mountain village can furnish, under a capable guidance, and with adequate inspiration, such a host competent to set forth such a play from its tinkers, tailors, plowmen, bakers, and the like! It is not native capacity that is lacking to mankind. It is the guiding brain, the patient love, the careful education, and the stimulus and inspiration of a great idea. But, given these, every village of country yokels from Dorset to Caithness might develop artists as n.o.ble and as devoted as those of Oberammergau.”
_The business of farming._
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