66 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



head that he will hitch up old Bill and drive across the 

 country to visit that wonderful man, only to finQ that his farm 

 is practically a byword in the neighborhood Avhere he lives; 

 that his fences are down, the boards are off the barn doors, 

 and the holes in the barn roof, and weeds in the fields where the 

 crops ought to be. 



I say, therefore, that a man should never go on the stump 

 at a farmers' institute unless he is known as a good farmer 

 at home. I am not speaking, of course, now of a scientific 

 man. I am speaking of those who pretend to be practical 

 men, and who go out in talk. Possibly I am using hard 

 words. But I tell you, my friends, you cannot afford to toler- 

 ate that sort of thing for a minute. Possibly that is not so in 

 Connecticut. Whether it is or not, I have known of such in- 

 stances, and that is the very kind of man that should be kept 

 off the platform at the farmers' institute. 



And the man who knows it all, leave him at home to tell 

 his big stories there to his own horses and cows, or to his 

 neighbors and friends who have sized him up fifty times and 

 among whom he can do no mischief. Leave the " know-it- 

 all " man at home. Put the practical man on the platform, 

 and the man who has the courage to stand up and say " I 

 don't know " when it is the truth. It seems to me marvel- 

 ously strange that a man shrewd in other respects, a good 

 farmer and business man, does not have the sense to say when 

 they are asked about something which they do not know very 

 much about, " I don't know." How much more manly and 

 how much more straightforward it is for a man to say hon- 

 estly and fairly " I do not know," when something of this kind 

 is asked of him, than to go into an attempt at a labored ex- 

 planation. He makes himself ridiculous. The chances are 

 ten to one that there are practical farmers right in his audience 

 who do know, and who could get up and answer the question 

 and tell all about it if they only had assurance upon their feet. 

 So I say, do not send the " know-it-all " man out on your 



