STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. l6$ 



apple, kept in an ordinary cellar. In northern Pennsylvania 

 that Porter apple would have been gone by the middle of Sep- 

 tember at the latest. Perhaps we never think of it as anything 

 but a summer apple. You can grow those summer varieties and 

 put them in after the apples from other localities would be gone. 

 It seems to me there must be a decided advantage in that. 

 There are some of the advantages which are offered in a finan- 

 cial way. 



The farm offers also an opportunity for usefulness. As I 

 said, we make a mistake in thinking it is all dollars. It is 

 not all dollars; we want something more than that. We want 

 a life. We want the opportunity to make our life count for 

 something in the world. Now no calling monopolizes the oppor- 

 tunities for usefulness. In all fields of effort a man can make 

 himself useful to the community. Perhaps you may think that 

 the farm is circumscribed, narrow, that it does not give you a 

 field for making yourself felt in the community. But if you 

 were to go into the city where you know not your next door 

 neighbor, just one little atom in that whirl and swarm, what 

 chance have you to make your influence felt as a young man 

 under those conditions? In a farming community you know 

 every one. The young man who has within him the ability can 

 make his life count for far more for the upbuilding, political, 

 moral and in every way, in a community, than he can in a larger 

 community. And the man who takes his place on the farm can 

 make his life count. We need good farmers, men who shall set 

 good examples of how to grow good crops and get good returns, 

 but we need educated men, men who will take their place in the 

 community and stand for the best in life, more than we need 

 farmers. 



The farm oft'ers above all things an opportunity for home 

 making, and it seems to me that in that lies one of its deepest 

 appeals. It is the one thing which appealed to me more than 

 anything else in all the years I was teaching. As a teacher my 

 position was reasonably secure, but I never could have a home 

 in the full sense of the word. I never could even plant a straw- 

 berry bed and be sure I could pick the fruit from that bed. 

 Perhaps the landlord would for some reason want that house, 

 or I would decide to move to another house. Two or three 



