THE COUNTRY HOME [CHAPTER 
raised their house frames, husked their corn, and 
reaped their harvests by united effort, while the 
women knitted and spun and wove the family cloth- 
ing and carpets. The state was called the Com- 
monwealth, and the town meeting still remains 
as a recognition of our necessary common weal 
—and our possible common woe. As we look 
ahead we shall understand that individualism must 
increase its efforts for united work. The new 
country life will teach us to link our energies as 
never before. The middleman will become of 
less importance. Postal Savings Banks will gather 
the earnings of the poorer classes, and make them 
small capitalists. By going into the country we 
are not to be scattered and alienated, but to be 
brought into an alliance that is impossible in the 
herded city. 
By these steps we are coming into an era of co- 
6peration in country schools — a codperation that 
is being worked out by events as much as by logic. 
Small district schools by the wayside are giving way 
to town schools, with splendid sanitation and bet- 
ter teachers — these in turn becoming centers of 
moral and intellectual life. It is not at all unlikely 
that the restoration of the town church will be in 
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