80 VERMONT AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



hear of him outside of the little round of local and neighbor- 

 hood gossip. So with our farmer; if he does thing's well, is 

 conspicuous in some lines of his work, is above the average, 

 he is a leader in thought and action, though recognition may 

 come grudgingly from some, often from many, still it is this 

 man who is making his mark upon the community and is bet- 

 tering his locality, in his way, quite as much perhaps as if he 

 taught from rostrum or pulpit. It is out of such material 

 that, in natural ways, comes the thought and example which 

 at last become crystallized into town improvement societies, 

 and the well considered practices and purposes of the few be- 

 come the accepted desire and the executed will of the many 

 and then we say. " How that town is picking up! " 



In this town improvement, from the farmer's side, there 

 is a personal and a community effort, or its reverse, that is 

 closely analogous. Individual men and individual localities 

 are alike ; each is dominated by ambitious purposes, or by a 

 listlessness that means retrogression. All success, however 

 general it may have become, was the effort of some one person 

 in its conception, and its growth has arisen from the fact that 

 others seeing it and admitting its superiority have adopted it, 

 in whole or part, and there has been a general improvement 

 as the result; so I say that, in our farm methods and improve- 

 ments, success and its effect on the community measured by the 

 attention one gives it and the faith manifested in it as well. 



If one goes about his work with the expectation of suc- 

 ceeding he is all the more likely to meet with success ; much 

 more than another who is ever discussing the discouraging 

 features connected with it, continually wishing that he were 

 engaged in something else, and as a rule, saying, " If I could 

 only have a steady salary I would be independent of all trials 

 and setbacks." forgetting that this is a plain confession of 

 inferiority, that living is then dependent upon some other 

 man's ability, when a little resolution and vim might have 

 been this complainer's part in upbuilding and improving. 

 One of the drawbacks in rural life, and it is a grewing " hab- 

 it," is that one becomes willing to lose his identity, to sink 

 his individualism, to seek a place where another can plan for 

 him ; thus the man becomes a machine, and ordinary place 

 seeker, and puts himself where improvement is out of the 

 question and all his faculties are another's to command; then, 

 when this head master fails, as fail he does early and often, 

 the dependent is thrown out upon the breakers and in self- 

 preservation is ready to grasp any plank, even if it be shorter 

 and narrower, affording a much more slender hold on life. In 

 this, the country is not a very frequent sufferer, but in the 

 severe straits into which farming has fallen, it exists, and it 



