SOCIAL CAUSES OF TOTEEST 137 



servers that one reason why farmers co-operate so little 

 is that thoy have not learned leani-work through play 

 in youth. Play is one of the most ethical of all human 

 activities. In other activities we are largely controlled 

 from without. In play we are most free. Play is 

 spontaneous, and therefore self-expressive, and thus 

 ethical. But it has also another great meaning. It is 

 in play that the instinctive aversion of one individual 

 to another is most fully overcome, and the social spirit 

 is fostered. It is when individuals come together with 

 pleasure that they merge so as to become a society, a 

 community. 



An unsolved problem is as to how the recreations of 

 country life may be so associated with its tasks that 

 boys and girls shall regard farm life as a desirable 

 vocation. The recreations of the country must become 

 native and significant ; must have a true relation to 

 real life in the country they cannot be exotic. The 

 farmer distrusts the city reformer's knowledge of rural 

 life, and humorously depicts it: 



I would flee from the city's rule and law, 



From its form and fashion cut loose, 

 And go where the strawberry stands on its straw, 



And the gooseberry grows on its goose. 

 Oh, let me drink from a moss-grown pump 



That was hewn from a pumpkin tree; 

 Eat mush and milk from a rural stump 



(From form and fashion free) ; 

 New-gathered mush from the mushroom vine, 



And milk from a milk-weed sweet, 

 With luscious pine-apple from the pine 



(Such food as the gods might eat), 

 And then to the whitewashed dairy I'd turn, 



Where the dairy maid hastening hies, 



