84 BOAED OP AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



ones as well as tlie big ones. It requires some scrutiny to determine 

 that a thing seems worthless. If a deeper study should reveal the 

 fact that this worthlessness was only seeming, the time and atten- 

 tion expended upon it might be well repaid. Or, failing in this, 

 our study may disclose to us a philosophy which shall reconcile us 

 to the existence of things for which we are unable to find use or 

 value, and this may be our compensation. 



We cannot ignore these things, and we need to study them in 

 order to learn how to feel toward them, what to think of them, 

 what to do with them. Quite early in the course of this study 

 one will be apt to make the discovery that worthlessness is not an 

 inherent quality. No thing can be named of which I would dare 

 to say that it is always and everywhere worthless. I do not think 

 any two persons would agree entirely upon a list of things which 

 seemed worthless. One would be sure to include things to which 

 the other would assign some value. A slight difference in circum- 

 stances might lead to this difference in judgment. I know a man 

 who is annoyed by a worthless sand bank in the immediate vicinity 

 of his dwelling. His neighbor, living two miles away, would gladly 

 pay one hundred dollars for that sand bank. It is worthless, not 

 because of what it is, but because of where it is. Two other 

 persons might dijffer in their judgment of an article towards which 

 they stood in precisely the same relation, by reason of difference 

 in themselves, and the same person might, at different times, give 

 opposing judgments concerning the same thing, all outward condi- 

 tions remaining the same, because of change of feeling or increase 

 of knowledge within himself. These assertions need neither illus- 

 tration nor proof. I confidently appeal to the consciousness and 

 observation of every one of you for the evidence to sustain them. 

 They show that worthlessness, instead of being an inherent quality, 

 is ever the child of circumstances. It is very often a creature of 

 time or place. A thing is, or seems, v/orthless because it is in the 

 wrong place, or because the time for it to be valuable lies either 

 in the past or future. This quality may attach to an article because 

 it is in the possession of the wrong person. Our own limitations are 

 perhaps the most fruitful cause of the worthlessness of things 

 We are ignorant of values, and it is therefore to us as if they did 

 not exist. If we only knew enough, there might be nothing in 

 the wide world but would have a value for us. I think that there 

 is scarcely anything of which we can say even that it seems worth- 



