to industrialism and absorbed in its activities. As a McAndrews’ hymn expresses the frantic rush of the industrial river, so these primitive customs could give us something of the mysticism and charm of the industrial springs, a suggestion of source, a touch of the refinement which adheres to simple things. This study of origins, of survivals, of paths of least resistance--refining an industrial age through the people and experiences which really belong to it and do not need to be brought in from the outside--would surely result in a revived enthusiasm for human life and its possibilities which would in turn react upon the ideals of government. The present lack of understanding of simple people and the dearth of the illumination which knowledge of them would give, can be traced not only in the social and political maladjustment of the immigrant in municipal centres, but is felt in so-called “practical affairs” of national magnitude. Regret is many times expressed that, notwithstanding the fact that nine out of every ten immigrants are of rural birth and are fitted to undertake that painstaking method of cultivating the soil which American farmers despise, they nevertheless all tend to congregate in cities where their inherited and elaborate knowledge of agricultural processes is unutilized. But it is characteristic of American complacency when any assisted removal to agricultural regions is contemplated, that we utterly ignore the past experiences of the immigrant and always assume that each family will be content to live in the middle of its own piece of ground, although there are few peoples on the face of the earth who have ever tried isolating a family on one hundred and sixty acres or on eighty, or even on forty. But this is the American way--a survival of our pioneer days--and we refuse to modify it, even in regard to South Italians, although from the day of mediaeval incursions they have lived in compact villages with an intense and elaborated social life, so much of it out of doors and interdependent that it has affected almost every domestic habit. Italian women knead their own bread, but depend on the village oven for its baking, and the men would rather walk for miles to their fields each day than to face an evening of companionship limited to the family. Nothing could afford a better check to the constant removal to the cities of the farming population all over the United States than the possibility of combining community life with agricultural occupation. This combination would afford that development of civilization which, curiously enough, density alone brings and for which even a free system of rural delivery is not an adequate substitute. Much of the significance and charm of rural life in South Italy lies in its village companionship, quite as the dreariness of the American farm life inheres in its unnecessary solitude. But we totally disregard the solution which the old agricultural community offers,