38 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



this moment, everybody who goes to housekeeping must know 

 something of chemistry, something of physics, something of 

 mechanics, because we have, in the means of carrying on the 

 evcry-day business of life, nay, we have in the kitchen ranges, the 

 heating apparatus and the cooking apparatus, that which requires 

 that everybody should understand some of the principles of chem- 

 istry and physics. For that the school should provide : but for 

 that the school does not provide, and the instruction necessary 

 for these things is not to be had in our colleges. We have, in 

 one word, too much book learning, and too little teaching of 

 things. (Applause.) Let me not be misunderstood. I am a 

 book man, and I am not going to slander books ; but I desire 

 that books should be reduced to their proper sphere ; that we 

 should have so much of books as is necessary to help the mem- 

 ory and carry on the general system of education, but that the 

 whole shall not be books ; that our children shall not be merely 

 machines to commit books to memory, and then not know how 

 to use what they have committed. In order to do that, gentle- 

 men, there is a radical change necessary, and one which I see 

 hardly any prospect of introducing. You must select from the 

 whole community the best and most intellectual men — the men 

 most capable of comprehending things in their general relations, 

 — and intrust to them the elementary schools. Until the man 

 who receives the highest salary in any place is the school-teacher, 

 you will not have brought things to the right position. There 

 are thousands of ways in which men in other positions can help 

 themselves. The man who is in office, or the man who has a 

 liberal profession, can help himself; but the teacher, if he will 

 be true to his duty, cannot help himself beyond receiving his 

 quarter's salary, and living upon that, because his duties are 

 enough to absorb all his energies ; and still you can pay more to 

 the clerk who takes care of your property than to the man who 

 takes care of the soul of your child. Is that the proper thing in 

 a Christian community, in our days ? — that the cashiers of 

 banks, that the keepers of books in counting-houses, shall receive 

 higher salaries, and, be estimated as more valuable men, than 

 those who educate the community, and those who make souls 

 worthy to be the souls of freemen ? It will not be so, I hope, 

 in the future. I trust that the foundation of the Agricultural 

 College will be connected with, and work in behalf of, an 



