All this marks a return to the former days, before the age of supercilious cities, when most of the wealth and culture and family pride was in the open country and the village. To be sure in some sections of America this frank pride in rural life has never ceased. The real aristocracy of the South has always been mainly rural. Many of the "first families of Virginia" still live on the old plantations and maintain a highly self-respecting life, free from the corrosive envy of city conditions, often pitying the man whose business requires him to live in the crowded town, and rejoicing in the freedom and the wholesome joys of country life. The hospitable country mansions of the South still remind us of the fame of Westover, Mount Vernon and Monticello as centers of social grace and leadership; and the most select social groups in Richmond welcome the country gentlemen and women of refinement from these country homes, not merely because of the honored family names they bear, but because they themselves are worthy scions of a continuously worthy rural civilization. They have never pitied themselves for living in the country. They do not want to live in the city. They are justly proud of their rural heritage and their country homes. I. The Triumph over Isolation. _Conquering the Great Enemy of Rural Contentment_ The depressing effect of isolation has always been the most serious enemy of country life in America. Nowhere else in the world have farm homes been so scattered. Instead of living in hamlets, like the rest of the rural world, with outlying farms in the open country, American pioneers with characteristic independence have lived on their farms regardless of distance to neighbors. But social hungers, especially of the young people, could not safely be so disregarded, and in various ways the social instincts have had their revenge. Isolation has proved to be the curse of the country, as its opposite, congestion, has in the city. The wonder is that the rural population of the country as a whole has steadily gained, nearly doubling in a generation, in spite of this handicap. Obviously the social handicap of isolation must be in a measure overcome, if country life becomes permanently satisfying. We are not surprised, therefore, to find that the new rural civilization has developed many means of intercommunication, bringing the remotest country districts into vital touch with the world. Among the factors that have revolutionized the life of country people and hastened the new rural civilization are the telephone, the daily mail service by rural free delivery, the rapid extension of good roads, the introduction of newspapers and magazines and farm journals, and traveling libraries as well, the extension of the trolley systems throughout the older states, and the rapid introduction of automobiles, especially through the West.