1884.] THE EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCES OF THE FARM. 187 



essential to success, is nearly so. I question if a gx-eat poet or 

 vivid writer could develop entirely in a great city, and without 

 some country experience, no matter how great his native genius. 

 I know of none who has not had some country experience in child- 

 hood. Many, like Burns and Whittier, were born and reared upon 

 the farm. Others have either been in small towns, or so situated 

 that they had abundant country experience. Thoreau was born 

 on a farm, his parents soon after moved into a village, but it is said 

 of him, that he drove his mother's cows to pasture, and hke Emer- 

 son, he did it barefooted. Longfellow, and Holmes, and Bryant, 

 and Irving, and Cooper, and the host of our best known writers, 

 either spent a part of their childhood on farms, or where they had 

 abundant opportunity for observation and experience in country 

 life. 



I have already said that at least fifteen of our presidents have 

 been farmers, or the sons of farmers, and had spent all or a part 

 of their childhood on farms. Of the childhood of some of the 

 remaining six, 1 have no information whatever. But all of them 

 of which I have any data respecting their childhood, if not actually 

 on farms, were amid rural surroundings ; some lived in small 

 towns, with farms almost to their very doors; others were the sons 

 of country professional men (as is the present president), and thus 

 they had the advantage of a country education in childhood. 



The same fact holds good of most of our most eminent states- 

 men who have not become presidents. To enumerate them would 

 be to make a long list. Daniel Webster, the son of a small farmer, 

 spending his childhood days on a little farm, and the nights of his 

 boyhood studying by the fii'elight, seems to us a wonderful picture; 

 it would be vastly more wonderful to picture him as the son of a 

 man living on a small salary, or with moderate wages as a workman, 

 in a great city, the boy by day in some crowded city school, and 

 his evenings in- the street attracted by the lights and the sights of 

 the city. No! great men do not come in that way, and this is not 

 a mere accident, it has its foundations deep down in the laws which 

 govern the development of human intellect. 



It has long been noticed that the greatest business men in our 

 cities come from the farms, or get a part at least of their early 

 education there. The two names now most often seen in the news- 

 papers because of the great wealth associated with them, are of 

 men who originated on farms, and small ones at that. 



