210 Social Training for Farm Boys and Girls 



occasion, and thus the availability of a most helpful 

 agency be permanently lost to him. 



It is not therefore so much a question of the dig- 

 nity and importance of the games played as it is a 

 question of the active engagement of every one pres- 

 ent in the amusements. Much will depend on lead- 

 ership. An able leader will have the group organized 

 before the several members realize what is being 

 done. An expert student and director of young 

 people was seen on a certain occasion to take charge 

 of a party of forty boys and girls ranging in age from 

 fifteen to twenty years. These were quickly placed 

 standing in two parallel lines of twenty each. Each 

 side was given a dish of unhulled peanuts and asked 

 to engage in a contest of passing the nuts down the 

 line one at a time, from hand to hand, the one at 

 the farther end of the line placing the nuts in a 

 receptacle. This simple game "broke the ice" for 

 the entire evening. After that it was easy to keep 

 the entertainment going. 



The supervisor of the social affair is advised to 

 discourage all games that tend to an over-amount of 

 silliness and that allow for undue familiarity of the 

 sexes. There is, however, a dignified form of fun 

 and merriment quite as enjoyable as the baser sort. 

 And, too, the leader of the evening need not be re- 

 minded of the many little opportunities for inculcat- 

 ing wholesome lessons in dignified manners. Many 

 a "green" and awkward country youth is started on 



