can be loved without being adequately appreciated. Such epithets as "celestial" and "supernal" come readily to the listening mind experiencing effects in ignorance of their cause, sensing quality that escapes analysis. Besides, as a devotee of Bach observed: "He wouldn't be guilty of the vulgarity of meaning anything." This, naturally, greatly increases the musical audience, and even in listening the ear learns to discriminate through the reasoning of the heart, which, according to Pascal's famous dictum, the intellect knows not of. To secure thoroughgoing appreciation, as well as requiring special competence, music demands attentive consideration. But perhaps of all the arts it makes the most direct appeal to the soul, and therefore to the widest public. Its emotional "content" is great, and vague no doubt compared with what may be visualized, but the best of it stirs emotion through mental tension, finally exacting appreciation before it fully rewards it. It trains its public in delighting it; and, on the other hand, of course it hasn't delighted it without trying to. Something, at any rate, in the general breast finds this art least caviare to it and responds most readily to the enchantment of the most highly specialized and least material of æsthetic expressions.

Whether or no, therefore, we have done as well as could fairly be expected of us in musical production, it is natural that the increase of musical appreciation among us should have already proved one of our chief cultural agencies. There is no doubt of this increase. It is noted on every hand as are the agencies of increased instruction, encouraged by popular support and private benevolence in independence of the State aid we deem artificial where not imperative. Mr. Lawrence Gilman, writing of Brahms's Second Symphony in his "programme notes" for the Philharmonic audience-themselves an annual course in popular culture-observes: "It is doubtful if there are many to-day, even though they be far less musically receptive than Felix Weingartner [who had called it obscure in his "The Symphony Since Beethoven"], who find anything difficult of comprehension in this Symphony with its gravely beauti

ful Adagio. . . . An open window into a poet's heart." I find that striking. If Mr. Gilman, who writes always with the reserve becoming authority, can to-day record such an elevation of general comprehension to a level above that of one of the most distinguished of contemporary musicians a few years ago, the circumstance at least indicates the readiness with which popular responds to professional culture, and should tend to allay alarm as to the vulgarizing effects of popularization-especially if the matter in question be one of looking through "an open window into a poet's heart" undisturbed by the pyrotechnics of eccentricities " clusively for brass and wood wind."

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It is almost axiomatic that one reason for this advance in musical appreciation over that in other æsthetic fields should be that in music the classics are kept constantly in mind and less neglected than elsewhere because they are dear as well as esteemed. Professional and public are unitedly in closer touch with the proven rather than the problematical best; practically the more "popular" the programme (within obvious limits) the more the classic outweighs the casual. Novelties are for the expert, and until they reach the classic standard, which has a moment before enchanted the ear or habitually "vibrates in the memory," they are on trial. Thus either in echo or reminiscence this standard is ever present in the mind to estimate experiment until it has conquered the favor more ready, in the case of other arts, to take the unexpected on its own terms. The ear has, either actively or subconsciously, been trained by familiarity with masterpieces whose parallels in the plastic arts the tyro may never have beheld, and which are less accessible even to the amateur-that element of the public whose development is so essential to popular culture and so considerable in music. Music, in fine, demonstrates the achievability of distinction in appreciation which in one way or another is an inseparable ally in the development of art and, as the field in which perhaps our general æsthetic cultivation has made most progress, best proves the pertinence of popular culture to the distinction which is at once democratic and unimpeachable.

F the pilot of the St. Louis air-mail ever looks down in the moonlight as he crosses from Indiana into Illinois, he sees a prairie landscape fairly representative, probably, of the best of our American midwest.

He is then above Edgar County, an area of some 675 square miles of Illinois black loam and brown silt, fields crisscrossed by thousands of corn rows, clusters of trees breaking the roof lines of farmhouses in gentle rollings of the land, villages every five or six miles centred on church spires, roads converging from all directions upon Paris, the county-seat.

Here approximately 8,000 persons in the one small city and 18,000 outside of it live a life as farmer folk and town neighbors which is the sheer product of a century spent in pioneering and development. There is no great university here, as at Champaign-Urbana, or group of black chimneys as at Terre Haute across the State line. Paris has four small factories which diversify the employment of its people favorably. But Edgar County is primarily an expanse of farms.

If not from the air, then surely from car-windows, have thousands upon thousands of us looked out and wondered what kind of life was lived in the quiet farmsteads we could see as the train sped past. Lately some of us have been given a new light on that subject for this prairie county, and the insight it has afforded us into the tastes and purchases of such representative Americans has proven fascinating.

The thing came about because the president of one of the factories in Paris desired to suit his product more confidently to his consumers. His product was advertising specialties. He concluded he could gain more of what his trade calls "conscious obligation" if he knew more

definitely what his consumers liked and what they were able to buy. He gave me the commission of identifying their wants and finding out how those wants were met.

We were not interested in what is called "farm relief." Our concern was with the life these people live as conditions are now, in 1927-whether they get or never get what politicians mean by "farm relief." It is significant of something, let the reader judge what, that a keen manufacturer did not think it dangerous to disregard "farm relief" in a programme to serve the farmer in 1928.

The study spread over the months of December and January. In the entire experience not a single person refused an answer. More striking than that, merchants and officials opened their books freely and called each other by telephone to help. Many of the farm households were within the range of my own friendships; yet it happened sometimes that with all their willingness, these people were unable to furnish the totals and budgets I sought, and we had recourse to the Edgar County Farm Bureau, where, as it proved, we could find out almost anything we needed to know.

Now that the work is done and the report accepted, I suspect that the best beginning to an understanding of the life lived in this county in 1927 lies in the finding that the money income of the county is very great indeed. From major sources alone it passed $11,400,000. This is the equivalent of $2,500 for each household.

Industrial wage-earners in Paris factories earned $845 a year on an average. Storekeepers had an average earning of $2,650 each. Town workers above the grade of helpers were paid $1,100 on the average. All that remain of workers not on farms, that is to say the clerks in the stores, the half-skilled laborers, the waiters in small restaurants, the drivers of delivery-wagons and the like, earned in the towns an average of $830 a year.

Hired help on the farms seemed to be at least equally well paid. There are 2,352 farm units, and four of them out of five took on workers by the year for about $40 a month for each man, somewhat more when the worker brought a family with him. In each case a room was furnished or a house; and for each family the means were provided for the growing of all the green food, all the meat, and all the dairy products the family could use, along with most of its fuel. Perhaps as often as not the workman could add to his money income, if he liked, by raising chickens or selling milk.

In the sense of our cities there is no poverty in all Edgar County. What a remarkable statement that is! Several scores of families live unhealthfully. Hundreds of them, as we shall see, do without things which city-dwellers esteem to be absolute necessities. For all that it signifies, however, here is an American community of some 5,000 families in which not a single household is denied food to keep the body strong or shelter and clothing to prevent exposure.

When it does happen that a family is without food or is deprived of protection against the weather, that follows which our young novelists will find hard to square with their materialistic interpretations of our life: neighbors come from all sides to make up the lack.

A renter moved into a typical small farmhouse a year or so ago, and no sooner were the family belongings in place than everything was lost through a fire. The blaze lighted the sky at four in the morning. At six the homeless little group were in rooms in a finished barn on the adjoining and larger farm.

That afternoon the newspapers of Paris printed a suggestion that old furniture, including blankets and pillows, was needed. Those of us who put off going only a day were informed when we did get there that the needs of the family had all been met.

The next thing to know about these families is that in town and country alike they are spending nowadays all the money they receive. Not a dollar has been added to the savings of Edgar County in two years. On the contrary, the money on deposit for savings has diminished.

This does not mean thriftlessness in most cases. There is plenty of that, here as elsewhere. It means, more significantly, a varying income, an upturned financial structure, a widening range of desires. More than a hundred young persons go from this county each year to normal schools, colleges, universities, and finishing schools to name the institutions of the higher education in progressive order of expense. The total thus outlaid is not far from $102,800. This, of course, is only a beginning of the expense.

The eddy of this process has been in motion for years, growing with the years. As son comes home from the University of Illinois or the University of Chicago, and daughter from the more distant woman's college, phonographs come to be necessities and radios indispensable luxuries. Two-thirds of the homes in Edgar have phonographs now, beyond question; probably half have radios.

In apposition, fifteen farmhouses out of each hundred are believed to have some sort of lighting system better than kerosene-lamps, and ten of each hundred some sort of a water system better than buckets. The aerial is already more familiar than the windmill.

The factor which has most upturned the financial calculations of the Edgar County family is obviously the automobile. On it, twenty-five years ago, these families did not spend anything. In 1926 they spent more on it than the total of their outlays for food to eat and clothes to wear.

Their community income, great as it is, cannot be put much above $12,000,000. The total for food and apparel falls to about $1,990,000. The total for transportation of all kinds is $3,583,306; and of this about two-thirds-the great sum of $2,190,000-is spent for the purchase of automobiles, for garage service and accessories, for gasoline and lubricants.

Edgar County rural sections spend more than one dollar in four of their gross income on automobiling. This is fifteen times what used to be spent on pleasure vehicles for these same farms.

Away from Paris the trade of the county is largely through general stores. Readers who sniff reminiscently at the mention of such emporia and recall the

aromatic mixture of scents as it used to be, with a post-office in the front corner and molasses side by side with vinegar in the rear, would hardly recognize these Edgar County general stores.

Somewhat of the old medley remains, but not much. They are package stores now. Candies bearing the names of Eastern manufacturers, crackers sealed against moisture, even beans in little sacks, and rod upon rod of canned goods in orderly battalions on shelves; silk shirts and work shirts; hats of well-advertised and expensive make beside straw hats for ten cents each; brooms and a demonstration vacuum cleaner; binding twine, alarmclocks, and magazines; lettuce and fruit from a great distance at nearly all seasons -this is the general store with which this representative farm community has come to be familiar. Thereto it sends about a fourth as much trade as to the larger stores of the county-seat.

Less often than one would think-the farmers step on the starter and drive to Paris, Danville, or Terre Haute. Tracing such movement through package delivery by parcel-post, express, and freight, and estimating the goods brought home by automobile, the total is not impressive. It does not make a quarter of the sales of the general store and not much more than a tenth of the buying done from mail-order houses in greater cities farther distant.

Every farmhouse with a permanent tenant in the county receives each year a catalogue from one of the old-line mailorder houses. If you have never seen one, you cannot possibly visualize it from a description.

It is like a telephone directory for a city of the first class. It comes free. It is an invitation to window-shopping. There on the "craftsman" table in the living-room it invites a casual turning of its thousand pages.

You cannot fancy anything not to be found in it, excepting such perishables as fresh food or cut flowers. A speed-lathe for wood-working; a system for measuring men for ready-to-wear clothes; a special farm cyclopædia; sweaters for ladies of large figures; water systems and lace curtains; furniture and family medicines; flour, perfumery, and calf muzzles -all standardized, made by the quantity

and all alike, the stream of them into Edgar County is unceasing.

A new method of selling by mail has arisen in late years. All mail-order establishments permit instalment buying. For the oldest of such houses the farmer has only to give the metes and bounds of his land, the town-dweller to give a letter of scant recommendation from his bank, to open an account. The new movement lifts instalment paying into a system.

Suppose that the county papers announce the appointment of a new teacher for a rural school. Her pay may be $90 a month for ten months. Soon a letter comes from one of these companies proposing what is set forth as "budget purchasing."

The teacher is to make up a sizable list of articles she would like to have-a coat with fur trimming, a toilet set for a dressing-table, an outfit of shoes and hosiery, the whole to cost possibly $300. These she can have at once, to use while she pays for them, if she herself will but fix the amount she can pay in monthly instalments and agree so to pay.

The volume of business must be large. More than 500 money-orders are issued for such budget purchases, it is believed, every month from the Paris post-office alone.

All in all, not counting bulk commodities such as coal and building-materials, a full third of all the retail trade of Edgar County is transacted through mail-order firms at a distance.

What kind of a home is the result? I hesitate to say for fear of creating an altogether misleading impression.

These are true homes of true Americans. They have the air of being comfortably lived in. They invite one, as does the shade of a thick maple in summer.

I have thought now and again how the typical city flat-dweller would smile over one of these midwest country homes. In his vocabulary small town and farm people are "hicks" and "rubes." In the county they wash outside the kitchen at a pump. They know when a telephone call is for them by the number of rings. They keep old-fashioned parlors. They have "jay" calendars on the walls and do without refrigerators.

Yet their homes give an impression of stability and permanence that typical flats in typical cities almost never have. They have this effect of refuge as composites. List their furnishings one by one and you will wonder how it is they have it. The custom is to wash the dishes and let them stand on the kitchen-table; to put writing-materials in the sideboard and not to have a desk; to make a vivid machine-rug and a huge rocking-chair the high points of decoration in the best room; to put vases holding bunches of dyed immortelles on the upright piano.

Why so many do without conveniences they might so readily have is a baffling puzzle. A dollar's worth of hardware, some of the lumber out in the barn, and a rainy afternoon of amateur carpentry would give any tenant farm-wife a cupboard; but not half of them have such treasures. Throughout the Middle West undertakers tell of house after house among tenant-farmers where the children sleep on a mattress made up on the floor.

Stoves must make what heat is to be had in cold weather, and since coal is high and must be hauled in farm-wagons, it is sparingly used. Cream is poured into the jars for butter-making as soon as it is separated. Produce of all kinds goes to market without delay and without fair reservations for family use; so that many a farm in Edgar County and all neighboring communities sells its vegetables only to buy huge quantities of canned goods for the hired help at harvest.

Exterior decoration has made headway in recent years, perhaps because of automobile touring. The spaces set apart for lawns have increased in size and shrubs have been set out. Ramblers are the most frequent of vines. They are the pride of the older women; the girls turn to substituting planting about the house foundation for the old circular flower-bed in the middle of the front lawn like a horticultural pie. The space between the barn and the rear gate has not so far been invaded by change: it is still a muddy mass in wet weather and an expanse of naked, black ugliness in all weather.

A constant cry goes up hereabouts over the taxes, as everywhere in the world.

The total paid by the people of the county for all purposes is set at $1,367,000 for 1926. This approximates a tenth of the money income.

Interest on loans of all kinds exacts another tenth, $1,030,423, though the payments to banks and mortgage companies seem not more than $827,000.

It will be observed that these two items together scarcely exceed the outlay for automobiling and that a considerable share of the loans made by the banks must be for the purchase of cars.

One can smile every now and then in the findings of such a study, thus:

All the benevolences reported, including the support of the churches, the Boy Scouts, and the County Homes, do not pass $110,000, which is less than 1 per cent of the chief items of income.

Twelve newspapers were operated in the county last year for $162,000.

Enough of the wealth of the county is productively invested outside to produce an estimated addition to the yearly income of $411,000.

Undertaking costs $100,000 for such a population each year; the upkeep of cemeteries $8,127.

On theatres of all kinds, at home, the county spent $70,000.

One household in four in a representative county-seat uses canned milk instead of fresh.

Well above half the total cost of insurance is repaid to the county each year in claims.

More money was spent on cigars, confectionery, and ice-cream than upon local and long-distance telephoning plus the telegraph.

Each dollar paid into such a community moves in and out the local banks several times, apparently, before it goes away to stay. Wherefore an annual income of less than $15,000,000 becomes more than $66,000,000 in bank clearings.

Of what the people of the area are thinking, and how they are changing their social customs, the study did not treat. It dealt with money income, and the findings which it produces for our more serious thought, it seems to me, are these:

That in a rich countryside all financial operations are now subject to riding in automobiles; that instalment buying by