ible foundation to this growing effort.

The city schools of New York have effected the organization of high
school girls into groups for folk dancing. These old forms of dancing
which have been worked out in many lands and through long experiences,
safeguard unwary and dangerous expression and yet afford a vehicle
through which the gaiety of youth may flow. Their forms are indeed
those which lie at the basis of all good breeding, forms which at once
express and restrain, urge forward and set limits.

One may also see another center of growth for public recreation and
the beginning of a pageantry for the people in the many small parks
and athletic fields which almost every American city is hastening to
provide for its young. These small parks have innumerable athletic
teams, each with its distinctive uniform, with track meets and match
games arranged with the teams from other parks and from the public
schools; choruses of trade unionists or of patriotic societies fill
the park halls with eager listeners. Labor Day processions are yearly
becoming more carefully planned and more picturesque in character, as
the desire to make an overwhelming impression with mere size gives way
to a growing ambition to set forth the significance of the craft and
the skill of the workman. At moments they almost rival the dignified
showing of the processions of the German Turn Vereins which are also
often seen in our city streets.

The many foreign colonies which are found in all American cities
afford an enormous reserve of material for public recreation and
street festival. They not only celebrate the feasts and holidays of
the fatherland, but have each their own public expression for their
mutual benefit societies and for the observance of American
anniversaries. From the gay celebration of the Scandinavians when war
was averted and two neighboring nations were united, to the equally
gay celebration of the centenary of Garibaldi's birth; from the
Chinese dragon cleverly trailing its way through the streets, to the
Greek banners flung out in honor of immortal heroes, there is an
infinite variety of suggestions and possibilities for public
recreation and for the corporate expression of stirring emotions.
After all, what is the function of art but to preserve in permanent
and beautiful form those emotions and solaces which cheer life and
make it kindlier, more heroic and easier to comprehend; which lift the
mind of the worker from the har