No, 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, 68? 



FARM JOURNALISM AND CORRESPONDENCE. 



By S. R. DOWNING, Downingtown, Pa. 



There is a certain correspondent connected with a very valiiabk' 

 farm monthly, wliose letters afford me and mine charming reading, 

 if the word "reading" as here used has place. Letters of actual 

 farm and home life they are, with the recital of personal trial or ex- 

 periment indoors as well as out. 



QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS. 



One can verily outgrow some of the questions submitted to this 

 correspondent together with his answers thereto. In fact one now 

 and then appears that has been outgrown by old readers of farm 

 monthlies and long time travelers in the pleasant and profitable fel- 

 lowship of Farmers' Institute instructors. Thus, we oldsters, pardon 

 us, do not read all of the questions and answers that seem to have 

 survived the ages, still dripping dow^n from the storms of puzzle- 

 ment that beset our grandfathers coming as yet from the days of long 

 handled frying-pans, tin kitchens and chimneys, chimney arches, 

 whose sheltering from the cold could in the olden time stool six 

 little felloW'S from school with a "Cobb" speller as a shuttle weaving 

 them together with the golden cord of study under grandma's owlish 

 spectacles. 



But people forget and questions, old though they be, must be 

 asked to the fiftieth edition, as an orthodox, fixed thing. Sometimes, 

 I think, and am perhaps alone to blame for thinking, that some ques- 

 tions are asked of editors and correspondents to get a name in a 

 paper in order to be in the procession, or to proclaim the presence 

 on earth of the individual interrogating. An automobile to fame 

 at Harrisburg is the interrogation point. 



To illustrate, "D" has a wind-mill, say somewhere in a land 

 of milk and honey. It is north of the house, this wind-mill, west 

 of barn and northeast of a fir tree. For four days "D" investigates 

 as did Helen's babies within the bowels of an Uncle's watch, as to 

 why the wheels did not go "wound." "D" mayhap — thrusts with 

 full name to be sure, an interrogation point into my correspondent, 

 beseeching wherefore the mill docs not go round. My correspondent 

 must reply simply, between lines, that the wind cannot climb a tree 

 or does not blow. Then again "D" may punch the correspondent in 

 order to arouse a sensation to his credit, with the query as to the 

 relative merits of wind and hot air in their various functions, or as 

 to whether or not a cow can get on a boost or "how old is Ann." 



I am simply confessing here at this shrine, if you please, what somc^ 

 of us oldsters do not always read. Your question box here should 

 be popular, for to-day there are undoubtedly thousands of questions 

 that should be asked and answered that are trite, because in our for- 



