He, who did not feel this urge, departed because of lack of business opportunities. Occasionally he returned disillusioned and exhausted by the city and eager to re-establish himself in a line of work which promised spiritual contentment. But more often he stayed away, struggling with the crowd in the city, returning home only for short vacation periods for rest and reminiscence, to see his people and renew boyhood friendships. At such times he was likely to be impressed by the seeming prosperity of those boys he left behind, of the apparent enjoyment they found in the narrow environment. The thought may have occurred to him that the life of the small town had undergone a marked change, that it had adopted awkward, self-conscious urban airs. Suddenly he realizes that the automobile and the movie and to some extent the topical magazine are mainly responsible for the contrast. The motor-car has given the small town man an ever-increasing contact with the city, with life at formerly inaccessible resorts, with the country at large. And the movie and the magazine have brought him news and pictures of the outside world. He has patronized them and grown wiser. The basis, the underlying motive, of all cultural life in the small town is social. The intellectual never enters. It may try to get in but the doors are usually barred. There is practically no demand for the so-called intellectual magazines. Therefore, they are seldom placed on sale. But few daily papers outside of a radius of fifty miles are read. Plays which have exclusive appeal to the imagination or the intellect are presented to rows of empty seats. On the other hand, dramas teeming with primitive emotions and the familiar devices of hokum attract large audiences, provided the producing managers care to abide by the present excessive transportation rates. There is but little interest manifested in great world movements, such as the economic upheaval in Eastern Europe. Normalcy is, indeed, the watchword so far as intellectual development is concerned. It is in the social atmosphere that the American village has its real _raison d’être_. Therein do we meet the characteristics that have stamped themselves indelibly upon American life. The thousand and one secret societies that flourish here have particularly fertile soil in the small towns. Count all the loyal legionaries of all the chapters of all the secret societies between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and you have a job suited only to the most irrepressible statistician. And the most loyal live in the small towns and villages of the United States. The choice is not limited. There are societies enough to suit all kinds of personalities and purses.