286 BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



study them — adapt everything to them. Either advantages of per- 

 son, of soil, water, or cHmate. They are yours to the center of the 

 earth and as high as the heavens. Among the first of natural advant- 

 ages on a small farm, is a good husband and a good wife. We 

 can make a whistle out of a pig's tail. We proved that for a hun- 

 dred years at the Connecticut centennial fire-place. Let us indulge 

 in a reasonable hope then. Don't be discouraged because things 

 happen to us on a farm that were never mentioned in our agricul- 

 tural newspapers or books. 



Where there is a will there is a way. No doubt, on a skillful 

 small farm, we could, if pushed to it, make a silk purse from a 

 pail-full of sows ears, neatly handled. We can make anything we 

 have a mind to with a protective tariff high enough and a liberal 

 expenditure of internal revenue, but this would not be the kind of 

 small farming I am hinting towards. This would be an arbitrary 

 and unnatural manufacture. The right kind would be a growth, 

 and a slow and easy growth, not liable to be threatened at every 

 election. 



Now you would lite, I know very well, before I get through, to 

 have me tell you of some produce, some crop, or some method or 

 trick of management that you can make a hundred or a thousand 

 dollars on, right away — next season. That would be nonsense — 

 I know better than to try. I don't know your business-training, 

 nor your individual circumstances from Adam's. But you know 

 your own concerns and I can trust you to mind them, with the 

 few hints towards them which I venture, in a tone, a tone merely, 

 an empty sound — except for what little love and human sympathy 

 I may have the grace to put in the sound. 



It is of no use to ask me to do the private work of your own 

 minds any more than to do the private work of your own bodies. 

 I can't do for you what a member of your family can, or a neigh- 

 bor who sees your circumstances, can. There are too many of 

 you for me to attempt to give any one of you a start in life. 

 Was it Byron who wrote, 



"How happy could I be with either. 

 Were 'tother dear charmer away ? " 



You try to ask me questions here, practical questions. I am 

 willing you should, and I may answer them fairly, or parry them, 

 turning the laugh, if laughter is the game we are after. A speaker 



