112 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. * [Jan., 



lamps are lit, and the hot fire is roaring. It is the best-edu- 

 cated man who has the advantage here, the man whose early 

 training has prepared him to catch the truth of a page at a 

 glance; and even he finds the task difficult enough. The boy 

 at home has scarcely a chance. 



On the whole, taking the farms of Connecticut all to- 

 gether, I believe there never was so bright a future before 

 the agriculture of the State as there is today; but just as 

 certainly I beheve that that future will be determined not so 

 much by the men as by the boys of today, by the boys who are 

 given a good education. At the Connecticut Agricultural 

 College we stand for the betterment of the farmers themselves 

 so far as they will give us the opportunity to distribute among 

 them the benefits we have in our gift; but primarily we stand 

 for the higher education, the thorough discipline and instruc- 

 tion of the farmers' boys. What the farmer's home and what 

 the country school cannot give we undertake to supply: we 

 work to give the boy who desires to be a farmer as good a 

 chance to succeed in his vocation as the village and city 

 schools and other academic institutions give to their students 

 who are to undertake other occupations in life. 



The other day I drove over to Columbia to address a meet- 

 ing of farmers. As I was climbing a hill in South Coventry — 

 almost in the shadow of the Nathan Hale monument — ab- 

 sorbed in the college and its work, I was suddenly disturbed 

 by a little piping sound. It was a small boy standing in his 

 dooryard and crying out to me with the utmost earnestness 

 and interest: " My pants are ^11 right now, my pants are all 

 right." 



A man in a top-buggy thinking about agriculture, a child 

 on the ground thinking about his trousers. What a perfect 

 example of our diversified life it was! Men are capable of 

 absorption in their own interests, they feel enthusiasm for 

 their own causes. We do well here today to be asking 

 whether or not our agricultural pants are all right, and if not, 

 wdiat will make them so? And in the warmth and glow of our 

 confident thinking we may be permitted to forget for the mo- 

 * ment all other interests save our own. But when a hail comes 

 from the roadside men are also capable of listening, and of 

 lending their interest, their sympathy and their support to 

 causes not peculiarly their own. These, I take it, are the 



