The Worthington advance., 1900-09-21
Gr6Q0rv ] MdS0n'S
cChnn1 By - - -
COnUUl. ". A. CURTIS.
t%<<<<<%<%<<<<%<<<<<<<<i
(From the Youths Companion. Reprinted BY
Special Permisston.)

NREGORI N1ASON mad not been In
II the little schoolhouse for II years,
until the morning when he returned al
teacher. The old desks, literally carved
away by the knives of furtive boys, had
been replaced by new ones, but except
for an increased dinginess, the build
ing itself had not changed.
AS Gregory read over the roll of pu-
pills to his father that night, he no.
ticed that the majority of them bore
foreign names. During his years at
the university he had kept little track
of what went on at home; and the ex-
tent of the change in the nationality
OF the school population since his
young boyhood astonished him.
'Where have all the Yankees gone?
he asked.
"You might ask where some of the
Germans have gone, also," said Mr..
Mason. "Gone to the towns and cities.
They sold their farms and moved away.
This part of Wisconsin is even now
passing into the hands of the fourth
set of owners that have held it since
I was child. First the Yankees. Then
Then both sold out to Germans, then
all three to Norwegians, an6. few
'Norwegians have sold out to Poles and
Bohemians of late years. There are
only IA Yankee families in our town
ship now, and the Irish are reduced to
one family
''Why do they leave, and what be-
comes of them?" asked Gregory, who
had not thought of his own township
as affording an example of the modern
movement of rural populations city.
ward.
'"They leave because there is no 10.
cial life; because they are lonely, see
so little of each other and have no so.
cial gatherings. When they get to town
there is little for them to do, for all
occupations are there overcrowded.
AS the young men can't get enough ia
support wives on they pass into bach.
elorhood, the girls become old maics $
and the race dies out"
GAIL for lack of social life. Ther
why don't they get up social gather.
ings?"
churches are widely scattered, and the
congregations are small. As for the
parties and societies, the men don'1
know how to go about such things, and
the women don't see each other Otter
enough to get up anything. There ar<
three townships here in row, and not
q village with over ten houses in any
one of them"
1T seems to me-" said Gregory, "that
some organized effort ought to be made
to provide little social life. We ought
to have few 'slum settlements o1
collegians transferred to the coun
try"
As days went on the young mar
realized that the school teachers of th,
west had more to DO than merely t.
instruct their charges in elementary
learning. It was for them to max,
Americans as well as scholars. +
As he began to understand the par
in the destiny of the country played b,
y the school teacher, sense of the dig
=; nifty of his profession came upon hin
and he held his head higher. He de
parted from the beaten track and gav'
.q his pupils short talks on the machin
!. cry of the government and the duties
of citizens. In the questions of th'
{. pupils he encountered SO many oil,
! world prejudices, so many race antipa
y thies, that he resolved to attemp
Americanization of the parents, an.
he invited the older people Of the dis
. trlct to series of lectures at tn
schoolhouse. tIss
He could not have asked for . NOR