not in those of the enraptured boy and
girl who are fellow actors with him.

An unfailing source of good plots is always at hand in the Bible; and no
better way to impress these stories upon the memory could be found than
by turning the incidents into little plays and tableaux for the family
to show. The Sabbath School lesson could be metamorphosed into a joy and
the symbolisms of Christmas and Easter could be made a reality by the
legitimate use of the dramatic instinct that is innate in all of us.

A form of art akin to the play is the moving picture. This source of
amusement and of education is within the reach of every country
community that has learned the secret of joining hands. The men and
especially the women of the community should be invariably present and
should instantly and firmly object to any film that seems to them
harmful. This being provided, the young people are safe and may have the
pleasure and instruction that come from seeing displayed the clean,
adventurous story, the doings of other lands and of historic events long
past.

CHAPTER XXVI

PAGEANTRY AS A COMMUNITY RESOURCE

Truth is eternal, but her effluence,
With endless change, is fitted to the hour;
Her mirror is turned forward, to reflect
The promise of the future, not the past.

--_Lowell._

CHAPTER XXVI

PAGEANTRY AS A COMMUNITY RESOURCE

[Illustration: The swiftly awakening artistic energies of the Country
Girl are finding an outlet in the new national interest in pageantry.
The farm, meadow or field makes an ideal stage.]

The swiftly awakening artistic energies of the Country Girl are finding
still another outlet in the new national interest in pageantry.

Now that we realize our puritanic mistake about the God-given powers for
artistic enjoyment, we are taking to our heart the ravishing delight
that the quick and vivid sense of beauty can yield. The pageant is one
expression of this; along with Old Home week, and other celebrations of
local history, it is also a blossoming of our quickening historic sense.
We see that there is a great deal of education to be found in the
pageant itself, and a great deal of community spirit in the making and
in the representing of this form of dramatic art.

The pageant is a form of drama in which the greatest freedom is allowed
as to the dimensions of the stage, the number of the actors, and all the
provisions of properties and scenery. Instead of a constricted