No. 6. DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE. 261 



where in the State of Pennsylvania in our pursuits. They under- 

 stand their business and you can't help loving every one of them. 

 I do not believe there is any mistake made in Pennsylvania in regard 

 to these chairmen, but I believe a chairman sometimes makes a mis- 

 take when he puts in a substitute. Some of them have so much 

 business, you know, they have to go away, and then they put in an- 

 other fellow to manage the institute. I have thought sometimes 

 that he was put in because he was the best friend they had in the 

 world, and did not seem to be adapted at all to the situatiou. 



I have seen a fellow get in the presiding officer's chair who did 

 not take very much responsibility upon himself. He was merely 

 there to have a good time. He announced that the first speaker 

 would occupy the floor and then he laid down the program as in- 

 differently as if he was going to sleep. He didn't seem to think he 

 had anything to do until the next fellow came upon the floor. Then 

 he takes up the program and has to get out his spectacles and wipe 

 them off and then has to look to see who the fellow is and then he 

 reads it off in just such a way that the speaker feels as if he had 

 never had such a send-off in all his life before, and wishes that he was 

 never an Institute speaker in the world. There is another thing 

 about it; they introduce these fellows and tell who they are. I have 

 seen a gentleman stand on a platform and introduce a speaker when 

 you couldn't tell ten feet away what he said and when the speaker 

 got up he had to introduce himself over again. It seems to me that 

 is a mistake, and that when a man is substituted he wants to be as 

 good or better than the chairman himself, and the Institute runs all 

 right. 



I have got a little something to say about the speaker — I am not 

 talking about the speaker from Lackawanna county. Some speakers 

 are afflicted with what I call the gift of continuance, and there are 

 some who get wonderfully careless, who begin to talk in a monoto- 

 nous tone and who forget that it is their business to interest the 

 people until some way or other they get hypnotized and put to sleep. 

 You know there has got to be something to arouse that interest or 

 it will die right there. I believe the best way is to have some music, 

 and I have seen the chairman when such a fellow as that was talking 

 step down to the choir and say ,"jS t ow if you have got an} r soul-stir- 

 ring music, give it to the audience when this fellow stops," and that 

 will revive it, and put new life into it. You can't succeed in farmers' 

 institute work when people are sleeping. 



At a political meeting in Lackawanna county, a Republican party 

 meeting, a very prominent Democrat had a lot to say, and the prob- 

 lem was, how to get rid of him. He was a member of the Legis- 

 lature. He talked and talked and there was a certain member of 

 the audience who fell asleep, and just in the midst of the meeting 



