rls who may become worthy mothers of a better generation of
future citizens, of men and women for whom the glamour of youth has
passed into the sober reality of maturer years, but who are still
capable of seeing visions of a richer life that they and their
children may yet enjoy. There are ready to his hand the institutions
that have played an important part, however inefficiently in rural
life, the heritage of social custom and community character that have
come down from the past, and the material environment that helps or
hinders but does not control human relations and human deeds. These
constitute the measure of his world; these are clay for the potter and
instruments for his working; upon him is laid the responsibility of
the product.

READING REFERENCES

CURTIS: _Play and Recreation for the Open Country_, pages
195-259.

FISKE: _The Challenge of the Country_, pages 225-266.

COOLEY: _Human Nature and the Social Order_, pages 283-325.

MCNUTT: "Ten Years in a Country Church," _World's Work_, December,
1910.

MCKEEVER: _Farm Boys and Girls_, pages 129-145.

CARNEY: _Country Life and the Country School_, pages 1-17,
302-327.

PART IV--SOCIAL LIFE IN THE CITY

CHAPTER XXV

FROM COUNTRY TO CITY

177. =Enlarging the Social Environment.=--In the story of the family
and the rural community it has become clear that the normal individual
as he grows to maturity lives in an expanding circle of social
relations. The primary unit of his social life is the family in the
home. There the elemental human instincts are satisfied. There while a
child he learns the first lessons of social conduct. From the home he
enters into the larger life of the community. He takes his place in
the school, where he touches the lives of other children and learns
that he is a part of a larger social order. He gets into the current
of community life and finds out the importance of local institutions
like the country store and the meeting-house. He becomes accustomed to
the ways that are characteristic of country people, and finds a place
for himself in the industry and social activity of the countryside.
When the boy who has grown up in a rural community comes to manhood,
his natural tendency is to accept the occupation of farming with which
he has become acquainted in boyhood, to woo a country maid for a mate,
and to make for himself a rural home after the pattern of his
ancestors. In that c