318 STATE BOARD OF AGEICULTUKE. 



TUESDAY EVEXIXG SESSION. 



After singing by the choir Prof. Geo. T. Fairchild delivered the following' 

 address on 



AGEICULTUEE IX OUE LITEEATURE. 



Agriculture in literature, literature and agriculture, what have they in com- 

 mon? Such has been the questioning of many an earnest farmer, and of now 

 and then an earnest educator in the years since the possible union of "learning 

 and labor" has attracted attention. Said a college mate to me when told of 

 my professorshiji, "What has a professor of English literature to do in an agri- 

 cultural college!"' and his question has been echoed again and again by people 

 who, like him, are neither farmers nor literary men. You can see, then, the 

 thought which has suggested the theme for this address, and will allow me to 

 appear as champion for both literature and agriculture, hoping to show on the 

 one hand that literature, through all the centuries past, has never let us lose 

 entirely the true ideal of tillage by hands and brains alike, and has kept up in 

 places where it might otherwise be lost, a love of rural pursuits ; and to show on 

 the other hand that agriculture in all its varied forms has given some of the 

 most vivid pictures, tlie loftiest themes, and the truest inspiration that our 

 literature affords. 



There has been a too common impression that men of culture, Avhose "penis 

 mightier than the sword," looked down upon that employment first in order of 

 time and first in importance for nourishing every faculty of the race. The fact 

 is that the farm and farming have stood in the poets scale next to, and blended 

 with, heroic deeds and tales of love, as nearest to those universal affections which 

 valor protects and love exhibits. Even philosophers have counted it worth their 

 while to bring their speculations into use upon the same subjects, while their 

 ideals of state and society have embodied in first rank high culture of the soil 

 and of its sons. The proof you can get only by searching in the Avorks of these 

 same poets and philosophers. Shall we spend a half hour in the search? If I 

 give most time to the poets it will be, first, because they are most in my line ; 

 and, second, because they are likely to be most ignored in substantial study and 

 left to the lighter hours of recreation. 



You will expect me in treating of our literature to pass by hastily those old 

 classics that have for so many ages set the fashions for the world, and to con- 

 fine investigations to that which is peculiarly our own from being written in our 

 mother English. Yet, since those classics have set the fashion, a glance at their 

 outlines may Tiot be out of place. 



Homer, in all his grand array of Grecian forces battering the walls of Troy, 

 did not forget to picture the farm, with its herds and flocks, and the garden, 

 thrifty with tree and vine and laden Avith fruit. To him Ave owe almost the very 

 names Avhich grace to-day our talk of nature's forces. They seemed to him 

 active beings, Avith a character. Ceres, Flora, and Pomona, so familiar to us, 

 though Eoman names, gain much of tlieir significance by being identified Avith 

 some of Homer's goddesses or nymj^hs. 



Hesiod you all have heard of, Avliose poem, "Works and Days," goes into 

 the minutiffi of farming, and that, too, for the humbler affairs of ploAving and 

 sowing, as Avell as for the richer gathering in of the harvest. His system of 

 farming, if system he had, may serve us of to-day but sliglitly; yet the same 



