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the tug of war, the races on shoes, the coasting and tobogganing, the carnival ball-these with modifications appear wherever carnivals. are given. They are always popular, always productive of fun and good fellowship.

With this fundamental similarity, however, goes an originality which makes each carnival distinctive, quite apart from any other event. Sometimes these distinctive features have little or no direct connection with winter sports in themselves—like Manchester's carnival movies or Dartmouth's loud-speaking radio which supplied music for the skaters. Sometimes they consist of unusual exhibitions by professionals or semi-professionals. At North Conway one interesting feature was the ski-jumping by a father of sixty and his son aged eleven, the oldest and the youngest ski-jumpers in the country. The New England Skating Association made. Laconia the scene of skating exhibitions unequalled in the whole state. At Gorham the presence of a fine team of Eskimo dogs helped to make the carnival a success. And Manchester found itself featured in every roto

All this means a tremendous boom to New Hampshire prosperity. It means that the state, which for years has been New England's most popular summer resort, has become an all-theyear-round vacation land. The advertising value of the carnival idea is being exploited to the fullest extent by our boards of trade, our chambers of commerce, Our newspapers, our hotels, our stores, by the railroads, by the manufacturers of sports equipment, even by the designers of styles, though Collier in a cartoon in the Boston Herald is moved to question whether knickers were made popular by carnivals or vice versa.

This is all legitimate publicity. But if that were all there was to it one might have reason for concern. There is something repugnant to a New Englander in the idea of commercializing the natural beauty of the country. If our winter sports are

the fancy and open the purses of our friends from out of the state, is it after all worth the candle? A passing fad, a brilliant publicity idea, but is it anything more?

For your answer you have only to go to a New Hampshire town-almost any town will do on a Saturday afternoon. You will have to go outside the main streets of the town to find the people; the central square will be almost deserted. But at a convenient meeting-place on the outskirts of the town you will probably find a group with snowshoes and skis, a good-natured group of assorted ages and sizes-and COStumes. These are Community Hikers, ready to start off across the fields for a tramp of about five miles. In Concord, where the idea has been tried out for several years now, that group sometimes includes one hundred or more.

Walking a few rods further you will come upon an open field with a ski

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jump and a toboggan chute and a crowd of rapid-motion enthusiasts swarming up and down the hillside. You will see entertaining exhibitions if you stop to to watch-more taining by far than those which are featured in carnivals. The equipment of the field, in nine cases out of ten, belongs to the community, is kept in order by the commuity, and is at the disposal of any one who uses it without abusing the privilege. Tilton boasts a toboggan chute on which the speed is slightly more than a mile a minute. Laconia has one which is nearly half a mile long. It is not difficult to imagine how incessantly those chutes are in use while the snow lasts.

In such community activity, sponsored by the community and maintained for the community, is to be found the best development of the popularity of winter sports. Out on the ski runs and toboggan chutes, the skating ponds and the snow-covered meadows is being stored up energy

and health which are more truly community assets than the receipts which directly or indirectly accrue from carnivals, however brilliant they may be.

Whenever the people of a community get together in any wholesome activity the morale of the community is strengthened. We discovered that in war times, we tried more or less successfully to carry the idea over into peace times through organized "community play" and by "community singing," and we have found in winter sports the best possible form of community activity.

This is true for one very simple reason winter sports allow no onlookers.

Baseball and football are out of the question as community games because they enlist the active brain and muscle of a very few players; the rest of us sit on the grandstand and shout instructions. Most of us rather like to get our exercise by proxy, and during the summer months we can do so comfortably. But the enthusiast who gets pleasure out of standing on the