30 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



Now there are a great many other things which I might say 

 under this subject, which would be of possible interest to farm- 

 ers, but I observe by the programme that I am down to occupy 

 the time between eleven o'clock and half past one. I hardly 

 think any of you will care to hear me talk that length of time. 

 I am not here to go into general details of the boy upon the 

 farm, nor do I mean to tell you in detail exactly how to do the 

 work about the farms. I will leave a little something for you 

 other gentlemen. I do, however, want to say this, gentlemen, 

 that the thing that is going to make the farms profitable is a lot 

 of hard work. That is the great thing that we should seek to 

 arouse and to cultivate. If our boys lose that they do not 

 deserve to be on the farms ; they do not deserve to dwell in this 

 country. Somebody was introduced once by a speaker in this 

 way. The president of the me^eting said that Mr. So-and-so is 

 here. " I have great pleasure in saying that we shall now lis- 

 ten to a lecture on fools by one — of my best friends, 

 (Laughter.) To which the lecturer responded, " I am not 

 nearly as big a fool as the gentleman who just spoke — would 

 have you believe." 



Well, you have had a short talk on ,the country boy by one 

 who is especially proud of the fact that he was a country boy, 

 an old Windham county boy, and who values that experience 

 as a country boy in a country village and on a country farm, 

 beyond everything else in his life. It is the greatest advantage, 

 it seems to me, that any boy can have. I would like to tell you 

 something that President Elliot of Harvard said to me the 

 other day. We happened to be together at a meeting. He 

 was advocating what, to some, were rather objectionable feat- 

 ures of our preparatory schools, and he said something like 

 this : " I think the preparatory school may naturally be expected 

 to give every boy at least a taste, a sip, of every kind of knowl- 

 edge, so that when he comes to college he shall know what 

 kind of studies he likes and what kind he does not like. There 

 were some who seemed to think that was expecting a good 

 deal of the school." After thinking it over I said, " Dr. Elliot, 

 I am inclined to think you are right," but as I look back to my 

 days in the country school, in a country town, it seems to me, 

 while I was by no means extraordinary, that I got a good deal 

 more than a sip of various studies. I got something not to be 

 had in the ordinary school. Beyond all that, in the country 



