Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/607

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FOLK-LORE STUDY IN AMERICA.
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the number of persons interested in the study.[1] The stated meetings of the chapter are held on the second Wednesday of the month from November to June. Many carefully prepared papers Prof. Alcée Fortier. have been read at the meetings, and some of them have been printed in the Journal. Among these we may mention Miss Alice C. Fletcher's able address on Child Life among the American Indians; Mrs. de Guerrero's paper on Games and Popular Superstitions of Nicaragua; and Mr. Stewart Culin's interesting remarks on Children's Street Games.

The Folk-lore Museum established in connection with the Philadelphia chapter is unique. Many rare and valuable objects have been collected and are deposited in the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. These objects serve to illustrate myth, religion, custom, and superstition the world over. The collection includes idols and ceremonial objects from China, Japan, India, Thibet, Egypt, Polynesia, Africa, North and South America. Prominent in this exhibit are amulets and charms of paper and wood and metal. Very interesting are those implements used for divination and fortune-telling and those manipulated in games. Thus, the evolution of the playing card is shown; so too the games of chess and backgammon are displayed in their various forms or types. Nor have the games and toys and dolls of children been overlooked. They are all there—even Noah's ark, with its beasts and birds, two and two. Such a museum is an "object lesson" in folk lore.[2]

Several informal meetings of persons living in Boston and its


  1. The following officers were chosen: President, Mr. Victor Guilloû; secretary, Mr. Stewart Culin; treasurer, Mr. J. Granville Leach; librarian, Mr. John W. Jordan, Jr.; committee, Messrs. Richard L. Ashurst and Francis C. Macaulay, and Mrs. Cornelius Stevenson.
  2. It may not be amiss to call attention to the exhibition of folk-lore objects at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. It forms part of a section of the Department of Ethnology and Archæology of the Exposition. There will be also an anthropological library and a display of the current numbers of folk-lore journals throughout the world.