When I wrote some weeks ago about drummers--traveling sales representatives--in the prairie communities of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, I was also reporting on the currency in those days of a folklore genre — the fraternal prayer, you might call it. By which I mean, a declarative sort of prayer, recited publicly, on behalf of some self-conscious group, often one that felt itself misunderstood, and thus called on the Almighty for understanding and relief.