186 ANNUAL. REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



ing at eight o'clock for a brief chapel service. During the rest of the 

 day the libraries and class rooms will be open for your visits at any 

 time, no matter what is going on. You need not ask permission of 

 any one and you need not consider that you are receiving a favor, 

 but rather doing a favor. If you do not find your way readily, you 

 simply have to incjuire and you will find our whole body of young 

 men students, as yell as members of the faculty and members of the 

 board of trustees who happen to be here, will be glad to give you 

 every possible information, and assist you in anyway they may be 

 able. 



I have been aske(3 this morning to say a word as to the relation 

 of the college to agricultural education; but I am warned that the 

 program does not call for any extended remarks. That is one of 

 those things you notice on the program, and you will see that there 

 is no space allowed for my address, and I suppose it is expected that 

 it will not occupy any space; there is simply a mention of it, and I 

 suppose at 9.30 you go on with the first paper. I understand b}' that, 

 that my address was understood, as I have suggested, to occupy no 

 space, therefore, I shall interject it, light as it may be and slight as 

 it may be, and if I can give you a single useful suggestion, it will be 

 all that I shall expect. I shall be glad if at some future time. Direc- 

 tor Martin will give me an opportunity to talk more fully; I was 

 thinking that perhaps he would give me one session. 



The thing I want to say is simply this, in as brief form as I can, 

 and yet as seriously representing' my best thought. Agricultural 

 education is like any other education, and education at best is a 

 complex problem about which the best minds in all ages have con- 

 cerned themselves. Let us ask the question, What is education? 

 You take a boy and a girl and in each there is a germ of life; I be- 

 lieve, and all my observation confirms me in the belief, that in the 

 living boy or girl there are certain potent forces, certain powers 

 which may be developed, and under kindly, judicious and reasonable 

 training, may be so developed as to evolve what powder there is 

 there, precisely as if you were to give me a grain of wheat. There 

 is a certain potency in that grain of w'heat, and there is no more; if 

 the grain of wheat is defective, you get a defective growth, so that 

 if your seed is defective, your crop will be defective. You take a 

 plant or a tree or a flower, and the whole principle holds. I believe 

 it holds wherever there is life that there is a certain germ of potency 

 which may be divided into large things and small things, and a great 

 problem of education is how to provide for ourselves the required 

 training, from the home up through the school — to provide these 

 living forces with training that will give opportunity for the efflo- 

 rescence, so to speak, and fruitage of whatever power there is. 



