1902.] THE FARMER AS A CITIZEN. 93 



fore, SO far as the farmer as an individual, the man, is con- 

 cerned, he makes his environment more completely and more 

 fully than any other man in the world, I don't care where he 

 is. His environment is made in the first place by nature, 

 which God has made beautiful and rich, and in the second 

 place by the surroundings which he himself chooses to place 

 around him. So that the farmer has a big advantage in this 

 fundamental thing in what goes to make up the good citizen 

 by this control which he has of one of the influences which 

 determine what he shall be himself. Now, as I said before, 

 the fundamental thing in the makeup of a good citizen is a 

 good man. Now, what makes the man? Have you ever 

 stopped to inquire what makes a good man and a bad one? 

 It is a very interesting study. And when you come to analyze 

 it, and get right down to the bottom of it, the fact is this : 

 the man is what he thinks. In the Good Book, in one of the 

 Proverbs, it reads this way : " As the man thinketh in his 

 heart, so is he." What we think determines what we are. 

 And so every person has the power of making himself. Some 

 one has said, " Plant a thought and you will reap an act. 

 Plant an act and you will reap a habit. Plant a habit and you 

 will reap character. Plant character and you will reap des- 

 tiny." And that is all there is of you. You are destiny, and 

 it all comes from a thought. I do not know where this comes 

 from, but some one has said this. Many people or persons 

 go on ignorantly and thoughtlessly thinking things that make 

 for their destiny. The president of Yale University delivered 

 a sermon to the students two or three years ago that I read 

 with very great interest. He said: " Young gentlemen, 

 tvhat you shall be in the future you yourselves will determine by 

 what you think. There is not a criminal in the prison of 

 the State of Connecticut but what is there because of what 

 he or she thought. They committed an act, and the law 

 laid its hand upon them, and the court sentenced them to a 

 just punishment to be shut away from society, and put them 

 behind the prison bars because of the act which they com- 

 mitted, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred I will venture 

 to say that that act was all thought out before it was com- 

 mitted. The act was reached by a process of thought, step 

 by step the imagination had run on, and on, and on, until the 

 act was committed." And so it is with every one of us. We 



