LECTUKES AND ESSAYS READ AT INSTITUTES. 339 



about the farm. And if a boy has any natural knack that way, he will soon 

 learn to make the wood-work of half the common farm implements. To be 

 ''handy with tools" makes a man helpful and self-confident, and fertile in 

 expedients that will many times carry one through a tight place. I feel proud 

 to say that the boys of the Northwest have not been, in times past, behind 

 their neighbors in this respect, as the records of the late war will show. We 

 all know that when the generals wanted a big job of pioneering done, roads 

 opened, rivers bridged, or camps constructed, the sturdy backwoodsmen and 

 lumbermen of Michigan or Wisconsin were pretty sure to get a call. 



The farm, in its vast variety of operations, gives a splendid range for the 

 cultivation of ingenuity. And surely the best fortune a father can leave his 

 boys is the ability to shift for themselves. A pair of well-trained hands are 

 the best servants a man can have. One whose hands are awkward and unman- 

 ageable, always getting hold of things by the wrong end, soon becomes dis- 

 heartened and discouraged, and instead of "paddling his own canoe," with 

 bold and steady stroke towards the golden shore of success, he is apt to lean 

 idly on his oars and suffer the tide of fortune to drift him whithersoever it 

 will. So the good farmer will have no tolerance of "puttering." He will 

 insist on his boys handling their tools with something of the dexterity and pre- 

 cision with which a well-drilled soldier handles his carbine, even although, in 

 these days of machine farming, manual skill is of less importance with refer- 

 ence to results than it used to be. 



Of course, no farmer boy's education should be considered complete till he 

 has mastered the arts of grafting, pruning, the general care of orchards and 

 their products, culture of grapes and other small fruits, management of bees, 

 plowing neatly in straiglit lines, sowing by hand of grass, grain, and root 

 seed ; taking levels for ditches and drains, the management of the latest farm 

 machinery, the training of horses and cattle, the chemistry of soils and 

 manures, the theory of the rotation of crops, how to run a dairy, and last not 

 least, how to milk a cow and keep all filth out of the milk. It ought to be 

 next thing to a capital crime for a boy to be caught manipulating the dugs of 

 a cow without having previously washed them. 



I think every farmer's boy should get all the benefits of the district school, 

 summer and winter terms, till he is 13 or 14 years of age, then winter terms 

 till he is 18 or 20 ; and if during this time he could pick up some knowledge 

 of parliamentary rules in a debating society or farmers' club it would be of 

 great advantage. A few terms in a high school where chemistry, natural 

 philosophy, and book-keeping would receive especial attention, would put him 

 on a higher plane with respect to his profession ; but better still, if he could 

 get a full course, or even a year, at the State Agricultural College. At that 

 institution he will learn broader ideas in regard to the philosophy of farming 

 than he can get anywhere else, and at the same time be acquiring practical 

 accomplishments that will fit him to adorn any station in life. Meanwhile the 

 three hours' daily work on the college farm, that runs along parallel with his 

 studies, keeps his hand in skill, his body in healthy exercise, and his mind 

 from falling into the delusion so apt to overtake students, that there is some- 

 thing ignoble and degrading in manual labor. 



And right here I take occasion to arraign our whole system of education as 

 being too impractical, and advance the claim that the Agricultural College is 

 a step in the right direction. I believe the day will come when every union 

 school in the country will have an industrial department connected with it, 

 and I do not look for the best results in the way of education till intellectual 



