No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 369 



ball to put the poultry exhibits in. We had a great exhibition. Now, 

 it you can, would it not be possible to send us speakers that are versed 

 in these different lines, who can score the different exhibits accord- 

 ing to their merits and, if you please, have the person who grew them 

 or exhibited them explain to the audience how the}' Avere procured. 

 We can get the people, and there is not any doubt with a little push 

 and with my assistance and Mr. Hibshman's we can make the insti- 

 tutes of Lancaster county a miniature winter fair, with the speakers 

 coming here capable of awarding the merits of the different exhibits 

 that we briug here. 1 don't doubt it in the least that we can get the 

 different halls we have for our audiences two-thirds filled with ex- 

 hibits. There is nothing so instructive or that inspires a person so 

 much as to see the living object right before him. (Apjjlause). 



MR. PEACHEY: Mr, Chairman, what I am going to say I think 

 will be more directly in favor of the farmers' institute lecturers' busi- 

 ness than what it will be with reference to the work that is to be done 

 at the institutes. 1 don't waut my portico to get bigger than my 

 house. For that reason I want to tell you that the thing 1 am in- 

 terested in is getting rid of that Saturday evening institute session, 

 and I know that some of them will shake their heads. It don't make 

 any difference. I have seen them shake their heads before, but I know 

 this aud I am going to talk it from the standpoint of the institute 

 lecturer that has been on the road all winter aud not several weeks dur- 

 ing the winter, and 1 am going to tell you that it grows mighty mo- 

 notonous to work six days in the week and do your work and take it 

 as it comes, which sometimes is pretty rough and was even last winter 

 in one or two districts of a certain section of tlie State where you were 

 required then to sleep in a place whei-e you should not sleep and on 

 Sunday morning take the train and travel thirty or thirty-five miles 

 and stop at another hotel and then in the afternoon, towards evening 

 start again and get to a place a little late at night and next morning 

 get up for the G.30 trolley and travel along to a station and then ride 

 eight miles out in the cold to get to the institute on M(mday morning. 

 I am going to say right here that it is an imposition upon the mem- 

 bers of the institute force and you may as svell use plain terms be- 

 cause 1 want to be understood. I tell you that reminds me of a young 

 man and lady that were going together and she had been somewhat 

 tanned and sunburned and she said the hide on her hands and face 

 were not just Avhat she would like. The young man said she should not 

 say hide; she should say skin. He said that is more proper. Then 

 they went to church. The hymn was announced, "Hide me. Oh, My 

 Saviour, Hide me;" and the young lady began to sing ''Skin me, Oh my 

 Saviour skin me." And so I waut to say just this that when you are 

 subjected to such things as that it comes near to ''skin me, oh my 

 Saviour skin me," working in the institute work that way and I would 

 rather "hide me, oh my Saviour hide me," in a hotel over Sunday than 

 do that kind of work. Now then you understand my position. Some 

 of them come up and tell me, ''we have got to have that Saturday eve- 

 ning session in order to make up our numbers." Why these numbers 

 on Saturday evening might be all farm people or they might be all 

 people that came to be entertained, and 1 know that I have tried to 

 entertain them. And so I am interested in that from the fact that it 



