292 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



could answer these questions, if I could tell what the morrow 

 would bring forth for us, we should lose our interest in life. Our 

 fathers had the same idea in briefer terms. They said we must 

 "live and learn." 



Yet we can and do help one another, although we never see 

 each other. Each of you holding some useful place well, like 

 every faithful drop in a bucket, helps every other one of us to hold 

 some useful place well. That was the feeling as a strong common- 

 sense, which gave Connecticut a name we should cherish, as "the 

 land of steady habits," and around that feeling, as a common-sense, 

 lie clustered the essentials of farming. Hold your place well. 



Vital questions of taste are continually coming up on a farm — 

 especially among beginners. Which horse, which cow, which 

 variety of grain, which potato, onion, turnip, beet, bean, pea, straw- 

 berry, apple, grape, or peach ? Which cucumber, squash, or 

 melon ? Innumerable practical topics of this stamp beset the 

 tyro, and they are of fearful importance when a fellow has to look 

 for his money coming back to him out of the ground. 



A totally ignorant person, if poor, better work for his board and 

 what more he can get, with any one who will teach him. A man 

 of cash and sense may find the best of teachers in a good hired 

 man. Moderately ignorant people can peruse the lines in their 

 gardens, alternating with the lines in books and papers, or run 

 around and read other people's farms and gardens. Only those 

 will succeed greatly who learn, after all their enquiries, to judge 

 for themselves. 



In all matters of taste, we must judge for ourselves, else how 

 shall we have any faith of our own in what we do ? If we ask any 

 agricultural priest or prophet to tell us which strawberry to plant, 

 and pin our faiths exclusively upon his old sleeve, we are liable to 

 "get left," because if at all conscientious, he is unwilling to have 

 a greenhorn bet heavily on the entirely new but reasonable hope 

 which an experienced party may be glad to risk his pile of ma- 

 nure on. 



We must be theologians enough to know what is good, yet al- 

 ways ready without bigotry to modify our judgment according to 

 the latest gospel. If we grow apples or turnips by the taste of 

 another, we shall act like fools when we are driven to a strange 

 market, with no guide but the taste of another. Until we have 

 come to years of discretion and judgment of our own constantly 



