No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 143 



That man is happiest who, possibly starting out with that idea 

 of success, gradually becomes interested in his work; gradually sees 

 that the work is worth doing well, rather than the return of dollars 

 and cents. He thus advances like the humble bud, which gradually 

 develops under the sunshine of spring into the beautiful flower; and 

 it is to him the colors of the rainbow, and as pure and spotless as the 

 lily, whose work comes to him a beautiful thing, even if it brings 

 nothing but a most meagre financial return. The man who does 

 not have an education for his work is simply unable to see the duties 

 that lie in it, or to see the utilities in it, and so is unable to gain a 

 beautiful conception of the work that he has to do. 



Kow, if we look at the lives of the apostles, we will find that one 

 of them, to whom reference was made just a few moments ago, as 

 possibly a person of another order, was above all the rest, the suc- 

 cessful and the initial man. And if we look at the life of Saint Paul, 

 we might possibly find those long days, that he sat at the feet of 

 Gamaliel, as affording possibly some of the explanation. If, then, 

 he was in his own mind contemptible of speech, he no doubt learned 

 logic and oratory; and in the spirit of it he found the secret of that 

 success that led him to say in that spirit to the Eomans, ''I magnify," 

 — not himself, but his calling. And if a farmer is going to succeed, 

 he must magnify his calling; he must not allow his own dissatisfac- 

 tions, his own temporary disappointments, or the cavils of others, 

 to disconcert him for one instant, or lower his ideal of the usefulness 

 of his work, or what is worthy of himself in its doing. 



And now I would like to add to that a thought, to help us realize 

 possibly a little more fully what the work of the farmer is. People 

 have often said to me, "What does a farmer need to know? What 

 does he need to spend time in study for? As though farming w-as 

 done by mere rule without change; as though the forces of nature 

 with which the farmer has to contend were not at all subject to 

 control, instead of being, on the other hand, placed here just as 

 were the animals in the garden of Eden to become the subjects of 

 man, his master. We look around a country community to seek 

 for the highest educated man of his calling, and we agree very pos- 

 sibly on the country physician, with a country school educaton, an 

 academic or college course, and three or four years under a specialty. 

 And what is he taught to do? To try and keep an animal going, whose 

 nature is, as anybody knows, that he shall go down and stop ulti- 

 mately. How about the farmer? He has but a different species to 

 keep going, and over animals whose highest qualities and capacities 

 are scarcely known to-day. He has developed by api)ropriate meth- 

 ods the Short-Horn, with the luscious porterhouse steak, the beau- 

 tiful Hereford for equally good roast beef, and the large milk pro- 

 ducing Holsteins, together with the delicate and beautiful Channel 



