SUMMER MEETING AT CHILLTCOTHE. 39 



get bread, meat and honey to eat than is tlie one wlio cannot commune with l)er, 

 even though tlie printed songs and wisdom of all nations be at bis command. He 

 who knows the component parts of stock, foods, soils and fertilizers is infinitely 

 better equipped for bread-winning as a farmer, than if he knows not these things 

 but does know how to analyze and paree sentences in a dozen diflerent languages. 

 To know what is capillarity as aftecting the rise and fall of soil-water is of far 

 more value to a farmer than to bi able to solve problems by the use of algebraic 

 symbols; and to know thoroughly the root system of a corn or clover plant will 

 make better farmers of the possessor of the knowledge than to be able to extract 

 the mathematical square root. It is not to be understood for a moment that I 

 <lecry the need of instruction in the subjects usually taught in our country schools. 

 There must be thorough instruction in these, but before agriculturists shall be- 

 ■come an educated class, educated in the technical part of their business, this work 

 mu^t be made a means to that desired end and not an end in itself, simply as that 

 much done toward making lawyers, ministers, teachers, merchants, etc., worthy 

 and needful as these callings are. 



But for the farm homes from which to draw fresh blood and brains in the 

 bright boys and girls that go from them to add luster to the so called learned pro- 

 fessions and commercial ranks, and make good the losses resulting from the 

 <lebilitating influences of the city, degeneracy would soon appear; but is it not 

 unfair that the system of instruction followed most generally in our country schools 

 should be such that whenever the ambition to succeed, to win wealth or fame, is 

 aroused in our country boys and girh, it is in the direction of some calling other 

 than that of their parents ? In the majority of cases the teachers in our country 

 schools are young men and women who are teaching as a means to an end entirely 

 ■distinct from their present employment, and from that of their school parents. 

 Particularly is this true of the male teachers. Many of them are embryo lawyers, 

 doctors or ministers, and naturally are looking forward to the time when without 

 question they will stand at the top of their chosen profession. Looking as they 

 -do through glasses of a particular c3lor, and in one direction, it is impossible that 

 they should not cause the young minds under their direction and control to imbibe 

 some of their views. So that, as year after year these different special advocates 

 bring their influence to bear on the children during their most impressionable age, 

 the inevitable result is the awakening of a strong desire in the breasts of most of 

 the pupils to get away from the farm home, that too ofcen is a cheerless one, to the 

 cities, where as their teachers tell them fame and fortune are to be won. 



While a comparatively few of the brightest and most indomitable of our 

 •country boys do get away and follow to success the awakened ambition, and possibly 

 are personally benefited thereby, another consequence is a strong dislike to farm- 

 ing and country life developed in the minds of the vastly larger number whom cir- 

 cumstances compel to remain on the farm. Submitting to what seems to them an 

 unkind fate, never having been shown how happiness may be secured on the farm, 

 they settle into discontent, and consequently, failure. 



So long as the world must be fed and clothed, so long must there be a vast 

 number of our people engaged in agriculture. The prosperity and comfort of 

 •other classes require that the farmers be al30 intelligent, prosperous and contented. 

 There is peace and plenty to be had in following agricultural pursuits, but a chief 

 requisite in securing these is to get the mind and heart of the child set right during 

 the moulding age. Levi Chubbuck. 



