While the first symptoms of artistic appreciation are beginning to be faintly discerned upon the American horizon, the old and familiar phases of social life in the country are still being observed. The picnic of first settlers, the family reunion, the church supper, the sewing circle, the Browning society--all have national expression. The introduction of such modern industrial devices as the automobile has not affected them in the least. It can truly be asserted that the flivver has even added to their popularity. It has brought people of the country districts into closer contact than ever before. It has given a new prestige to the picnics and the reunions. What offers more rustic charm and simplicity than a family reunion? Practically every family in the farming districts that claims an ancestral residence in this country of more than fifty years holds one annually. It is attended by the great and the near-great from the cities, by the unaffected relatives back home. Babies jostle great-grandparents. Large and perspiring women bake for days the cakes and pies to be consumed. The men of the house are foolishly helping in making the rooms and the front lawn ready. At last the reunion is at hand--a sentimental debauch, a grand gorging. Everybody present feels the poignancy of age. But while the heart throbs the stomach is working overtime. The law of compensation is satisfied. “A good time was had by all” finds another expression in the weekly paper, and the reunion becomes a memory.