426 ANNUAL. REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



everything; charity, patience and industry; generosity, frugality and 

 fair dealing; a veneration and respect for such things and observan- 

 ces as are held by men as sacred. 



The education of any man and a farmer, especially, that develops 

 the mental nature at the expense of or to the neglect of the moral 

 man is a failure. A man may murder language and be pardoned if 

 he be a gentleman, while to boorishness and selfishness, education, as 

 applied to brilliant intellectual endowment or attainmentiS, is but an 

 •xaggeration of vulgarity. 



But the gentleman if he does not have the education should get it. 

 If his English is bad he should correct it, by reading and studying 

 such books as shall show him how the makers of the language have 

 written it. 



I do not know of any other waj' to acquire an accurate knowledge 

 of the construction of our language and such a vocabulary as the edu- 

 cated man will find use for. I am not allowed the time in this paper 

 to dwell upon such books as the home student would find eminently 

 useful in the directions I have named. 



There is no valid reason why the farmer should not gather all the 

 flowers and the beauties of the language as well as the rougher, more 

 homely and utilitarian parts of it. It will not hurt his plowing, or 

 milking, or soWing, or reaping, if he allows his soul to revel in the 

 beauty, in the sweetness and in the poetry of the life around him. I 

 know that Robert Burns was none the less a good plowman because 

 he sang in the simplest and purest English the sweetest songs man 

 ever sung, and by his Scottish verse made the wide world love him. 

 He could plow and he could sing, and in his own dear way he sang 

 at his plowing. Thus, as he, I would that we farmers were all edu- 

 cated, so that from the plowing to the reaping, we could see and 

 understand and appreciate the rhythm of it all. 



THE FARMER'S BOY; HIS EDUCATION. 



BY MK. J. H. PEACHY, Belleville, Pa. 



The farmer's boy like the poor, we have with us always. He is 

 inseparably connected with the past, associated with the present, 

 and shall even more largely influence the future. He is the prime 

 factor in the problem of life and civilization. History, both sacred 

 and secuhu', cannot eliminate him from its pages, cannot change the 

 tiend of thought so indelibly impressed upon the past, by the repre- 

 sentative characters in life's drama. 



