SOCIETY OF CENTRAL ILLINOIS. 309 



organization, to develope the musical talent of the young, ia another 

 available source of pleasure and improvement, and one which every 

 head of a family should encourage, not only with words, l)ut with 

 the funds necessary for its uiaintenance. 



A Travelers' Club, which meets once a month, and at which per- 

 sons previously appointed give brief descriptions of different couji- 

 tries, their people, habits of dress, manners and customs, review the 

 lives of their great men and women, point out their peculiar habits 

 -of government, social, political and religious life, and compare them 

 with those of our own country and our own times. It is not neces- 

 sarv that we should have been a traveler in order to give an interest- 

 ing account of such things; an encyclopedia, with a few hours' time, 

 will give all the information needed, and with a little painstaking on 

 the part of a few persons during each month of the year, an evening 

 may be profitably si)ent by an entire neighborhood. It is the advan- 

 tages offered by such organizations as these that make city life more 

 desirable to many than life in the country; yet there is no reason 

 whv any should be without social gatherings of this kind, and the 

 old and the young may participate in them all with equal profit. 



While I have written this paper mostly with the young people 

 in mind, I will add that I do not believe in the old theory of killing 

 off the old horses first, and that when the frolicsome days of youth 

 are passed there is nothing better than hard labor under the sun. 

 There is nothing which speaks so highly for any country as a large pop- 

 ulation of happy old fathers and mothers, or better yet, grandfathers 

 and grandmothers. 1 recently saw a photograph of a grouj) of eight 

 persons, embracing four generations of one family, and having had 

 a personal acquaintance of several years with those representee!, I 

 know that it represented many years of happiness and prosperity, 

 and in order to prolong the lives of our elderly jjcople, the check 

 rein should be loosened on the long end of the double-tree. While 

 they have heretofore borne the heat and burden of the day, they 

 should now have the harness removed early and give the saddle and 

 collar marks a chance to heal. In other \rords, they should throw 

 more responsibility upon the younger members of the family. The 

 daughters should superintend the housework and the young men 

 tilt' farm. It will not l)e long until they will be yokeing themselves 

 up for life, and with a little experience at this tiuie of life, they will 

 be all the better prepared to keep up their end of their new duties 

 hereafter. One of the most un-American of our American customs 

 is the one of ".Ml work and no play." As a nation we have very 

 few holidays — Christmas, New Years and the Fourth of July — and 

 there are a great many people who pay no attention to any of these. 

 Our county fairs were at one time considered ])laces of recreation and 

 rest for our hard-working agricultural people, but they have so 

 universally degenerated into places of immoral and corrupt practices 

 that they are shunned to an extent that is beginning to alarm their 



