110 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



THE SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL LIFE OF THE FARMER. 



[Address before the Housatonic Agricultural Society.] 



BY REV. L,. S. ROWLAND OF LEE. 



There is a story that an Englishman, a Frenchman, and a 

 German were once requested each to write a treatise on the 

 elephant, an animal that neither of them had ever seen. The 

 Englishman, with his thorough-going, practical instincts, took 

 the next steamer for India, in order to get his knowledge at 

 first hand from his study of the animal in his native haunts. 

 The Frenchman, following his literary proclivities, began at 

 once to ransack libraries for works on the subject, that he 

 might know what other men had thought about the elephant. 

 The German, in sublime reliance on the power of his a priori 

 philosophy, sat down in his study to evolve the abstract idea 

 of an elephant from the depths of his own inner conscious- 

 ness. 



In responding to the request of your president to speak 

 to-day on the social and intellectual life of the farmer, I 

 am sorry to say that I must follow to a large extent the 

 method of the German. Though a son of the soil myself, 

 my youthful propensities were so strongly in another direc- 

 tion, that I fear I did not profit much by my agricultural 

 experience, as I am certain that agriculture did not profit 

 much by me. My reading of books has been as remote as 

 possible from the agricultural line, and so I am thrown back 

 on the inner consciousness as my main reliance in the emer- 

 gency. I am not certain, however, that my lack of practical 

 experience as a farmer is altogether a disqualification for 

 the service to which I am called to-day. Farmers, doubtless, 

 need, as do other men, to see themselves as others see them. 

 The outside view may for some purposes be quite as impor- 

 tant as the inside view. It is possible that, looking at your 

 calling as an observer and critic, I may say some things as 

 worthy your attention as if I had always had a place in your 

 ranks. At any rate, I have less scruple in speaking with 



