AN EXAMPLE FROM AMERICA

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 89, 11 October 1913, Page 13

AN EXAMPLE FROM AMERICA

WHY NOT AN OLD HOME WEEK? Th« "Old Home Week" kept by many American towns is "an organised effort to call back from a distance the tsone and daughters of an old town." so as to keep its memory green, and to hearten those who do not leave it. "Perhaps the old town of Lunenburg on the Massachusetts highlands should be awarded the palm for the most faithful and successful recognition of the day," says the Boston Congregationalism "For twelve years without a break it haa given the celebration right right of way Over every other local event and scores and hundreds of its former residents have come back, some of them from a long distance, to revisit the haunta of their childhood and to renew the fellowship of earlier days. A splendid home-coming it has § roved to be, and those who have wanered far from their ancestral abodes as well as those who have more recently taken up their residence in the town have alike been cheered by the sight of former citizens returning in such large numbers and with such liearty affection for the town that gave them birth and nurture. On these Tecuring anniversaries, which always begin with union religious services held Sunday morning, afternoon, and evening, an elaborate programme is carried put providing for larger and smaller reunions and including athletic contests, band concerts, a banquet at which hundreds of persons sit down together, and more formal exercises. "We wish that more communities would imitate the example of the towns and villages which have succeeded in making this festival so interesting and valuable. Even if it were not observed oftener than once in two or three years, the time and thought expended would be amply justified, for Old Home Week has many uses. ','lt links these rushing modern days with the slower, quieter times of old and fosters wholesome reverence for the God-fearing, Bible-loving, f Sabbathkeeping, law-abiding men and women who laid the foundations of our ancient life strong and deep in their own industry, thrift, frugality, and piety. Old Home Week puts its greatest emphasis upon the character of the American home as the real key to the solution of many of the problems that vex us to-day."