1902.] DISCUSSION. 61 



necticut alone so far as I could, and haven't studied into your 

 system here. It will not do to say that all methods are alike. 

 It would be a foolish thing to say that some of the plans for 

 whooping up farmers' institutes in Kansas, Nebraska, or Min- 

 nesota would work here. They are satisfactory to your 

 cousins, in those western sections, because your uncles went 

 West and your cousins have grown up amid new methods and 

 surroundings. Your uncles went West because they did not 

 know when they had a good thing, and the result was that 

 when they went west of the Allegheny mountains new methods 

 were suggested by new conditions, and while those methods 

 will suit your cousins, they will not suit you, because your 

 fathers had sense enough to stay here, and taught you how to 

 grow up with the country as they ought to have done, and, of 

 course, it is not to be expected that you will adopt western 

 methods. I will tell you, however, what you can do, and in this 

 connection I am reminded of the story of the young minister. 

 There was a minister who was a very young man, in fact he was 

 troubled with youngness ; that was the difficulty with him. Be- 

 fore he graduated from the seminary he was invited to preach 

 a Thanksgiving sermon way back among the hills of New 

 Hampshire, where the people have been voting for Andrew 

 Jackson for forty years and never skipped a year. The young 

 minister felt that it was his duty to preach them a political 

 sermon with reference to civil service reform, and all the other 

 reforms that a man could think of. When he came down out 

 of the pulpit he noticed that nobody referred to his sermon at 

 all. He thought that he must have been very deep. They 

 took him home to old Uncle John's to dinner, and when they 

 all gathered around the table, loaded with the big cranberry 

 pies, and the turkey, and the " punkin " pies, and all the other 

 etceteras of the New England Thanksgiving dinner, the young 

 minister supposed that he, of course, would be asked to say 

 grace, but he was not. The lady of the house stood up, and 

 rapping on the sideboard, said she would say grace, and here 



