412 STATE BOARD OF AGEICULTURE. 



spi'outings. If three boys are found together out of school, all must be wol- 

 loped or somebody has an uneasy conscience, for mischief is brewing. Boys 

 must be sober, frosty, doleful ; never caper, dance, joke, tell stories, play 

 o^ames, sing songs — except penitential psalms — must never be caught at a cir- 

 cus, theatre, concert, or dance, it's so wicked, and costs a little money. If the 

 farmer father would only think, while he is grumbling at the boys 

 because they don't like work, nor books, uor home, nor his company, that 

 their great, crying, everlasting need is wholesome rest and healthy recreation ; 

 freedem from the shackles of drudgery; opportunity to amuse themselves; if 

 he would only make the distinction between getting a living, a process famil- 

 iar to all of us, and living itself, — " engaging in and enjoying intellectual activ- 

 ity outside of and above that which provides for bodily wants; acquiring and 

 enjoying knowledge, and the power which is born of it; giving free exercise to 

 social sympathy, in a pure intercourse with young and old ; having a sweet 

 satisfaction in home, so that it shall be the one bright spot on earth, and 

 never left without a sense of sacrifice ; delighting in some things which rise 

 above the bare utilities of life, into the realm of the beautiful, and cultivat- 

 ing the arts which make this realm attractive ; finding happiness in the activ- 

 ity of the moral and religious nature in worship and in ministry,"* — all of 

 which is necessary to true living, — then fewer strong-limbed boys would leave 

 the plow and hoe for the yard-stick and scissors, to save their muscles from 

 labor, or prefer to simper and smirk behind a counter, to doing a man's work 

 behind the plow; and fewer would be found among the well-dressed slaves to 

 capital, "the shirks of the world, the would-be 'Peter Funks,' beggars, 

 thieves, suckers, swindlers, supernumeraries, and sinners generally."* " There 

 is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that he 

 should make his soul enjoy good in his labor. This also I saw, that it was 

 from the hand of God." 



False notions regarding the use of education, and the application of knowl- 

 edge, send many of the brightest boys away from the farm. Beecher says, 

 discussing educated farmers: "Lawyers, physicians, clergymen, literary men, 

 make the discipline of their intellect a constant study. They read, think, and 

 write more than the farmers. The difEerence between the educated and 

 the uneducated portions of society is a real difEerence, and the only way to get 

 over it is to rear up a generation of well educated, reading, thinking farmers. 

 Their skill and industry is felt, and just as soon as their heads are felt as their 

 hands are, they will be brought to the top." Many of the best farmers are 

 men of great natural shrewdness, who have had no chance of learning. They 

 feel the loss, and are bound to give their children the best education they can. 

 Farmers' sons constitute three-fifths of the educated class ; but the trouble is 

 they are not educated as farmers. When they begin to study they leave the 

 farm. They do not expect to return to it. The idea of sending a boy to 

 school, the academy or college, and then letting him go back to farming, is 

 considered a mere waste of time and money. If a boy has an education, he is 

 expected to be a lawyer, doctor, or preacher. It is honestly believed that a 

 farmer does not need brains or education. This is a very old notion. Bocaccio, 

 writing five hundred years ago, of people fifteen hundred years before his 

 time, says: "Now Cymou was a fool, a man of proper person, and the gov- 

 ernor of Cyprus's son, but a very ass; so much so that he was sent to a farm 

 house in the country to learn how to till the soil." While scholarship is not 



*Honand. 



