1884.] THE EDUCATIONAL INFLUEXCES OF THE FARM. 201 



has more than ten thousand children under its rule, which sup- 

 ports between two hundred and fifty and three hundred employees, 

 and expends a quarter of a million dollars annually, is too strong 

 an interest to give up any power it has. 



This new city education is becoming more imperious year by 

 year, and tries more and more to rule the country schools, or at 

 least to govern their methods. I have no sympathy with this. 



Have you noticed the change wrought in the school books within 

 the last thirty years ? Once the few books we had were satu- 

 rated with country life and country ways. How many of us remem- 

 ber the stories and works of Peter Parley, who lived near this very 

 spot ! Do you remember the pictures in the schoool books of 

 those days? They, were of country life. Now all is changed; 

 even the pictures, if they are of the country at all, are of the visit 

 of some city child in fine clothes to the ruder country. 



This changed way of looking at life, from the country to the city 

 standpoint, is affecting society in a multitude of ways. A popular 

 writer has recently shown the relation between this and modern 

 strikes in the trades, but time utterly forbids following up the 

 many suggestions that come up. The subject has been so long in 

 my mind, and there is so much that I want to say, that I have 

 overrun my hour. 



But I still feel that the hope of the country lies largely in its 

 farm population, just as the ownership of real estate in the country 

 is the most conservative material influence we have ; so I also feel 

 that farm education will continue to be the great moral influence 

 to keep the nation in sound ways, and ^'■level-headed,'''' as business 

 men say. 



The farmer's home is an influence too vast to be any more than 

 alluded to in closing. We Hve in the favored zone, where we have 

 true homes and firesides. This is the zone of highest civilization, 

 because it is the zone of firesides. A high civilization has never 

 developed in the tropics; it could not. It needs a home and a 

 winter's fire for quiet and thought, and to cement the family. A 

 half civilization grew in Egypt, and India, and Mexico, but it 

 stopped short of a high level ; it needs a fireside and hearth to 

 ripen civilization, and nowhere else do we find the typical home 

 better exemplified than on an American farm. 



So, in conclusion, I will say that, while I think that a relatively 

 smaller and smaller portion of our population will have the advan- 



