her groups.
It recognizes the social interests in festivals and sociables. It may
usefully add to its functions that of raising the standards of
community recreation, if no other proper provision for it exists; it
is under obligation to find wholesome substitutes for the abuses that
exist in the field of amusement which it commonly condemns.

READING REFERENCES

CURTIS: _Play and Recreation for the Open Country._

PUFFER: _The Boy and His Gang._

_Boy Scout Handbook; Handbook for Scout Masters._

_The Book of the Campfire Girls._

STERN: _Neighborhood Entertainments._

CUBBERLEY: _Rural Life and Education_, pages 117-126.

CHAPTER XVII

RURAL INSTITUTIONS

121. =The Complexity of Social Life.=--Closely allied to the agencies
of recreation are the institutions that promote sociability and
incidentally provide means of culture. It is not possible to separate
social life into compartments and designate an institution as purely
recreational or cultural or religious. There is a blending of
interests and of functions in such an organization as the grange or
the church, as there is in one individual or group a variety of
interests and activities. The whole social system is complex,
interwoven with a multitude of separate strands of personal desires
and prejudices, group clannishness and conservatism, rival
institutions developing friction and continually compelled to find new
adjustments. Society in constantly in motion like the sea, its units
continually striking against one another in perpetual conflict, and as
continually melting into the harmony of a mighty wave breaking against
the shore and forming anew to repeat the process. The difference is
that social life is on an upward plane, its activities are not mere
repetitions of a process, but they result in definite achievement,
which in the process of centuries becomes an accumulated asset for the
race. The most lasting achievements are the social institutions.

122. =The Village and the Country Store.=--Of all the social
institutions of the rural community, the most important is the village
itself. There scattered homesteads find their common centre of
attraction; there houses are located nearer together and the spirit of
neighborliness develops; there tradesmen and professional persons make
their homes and at the same time diversify interests and provide for
the wants of the community. The school and the church are often
located in th