Fanners^ Week in Agricultural College. 93 



ON THE ROAD TO TOMORROW. 



(Hon. Walter Williams, Columbia. Mo.) 



Americans are born tramps. They never sit still. The excursion 

 is the great national game. We are always on the road to somewhere. 



In part the travel disease is inherited. Because there was a May- 

 flower, there are present day journeys. Because John Smth wandered 

 over to the New Dominion — now called the Old Dominion — Kentucky 

 came out of the wilderness and Virginia was born. 



Traveling is contagious. The more people go away on tours and 

 trips and excursions the more other people want to go. No farmer ever 

 saw his neighbor hitch up his spring wagon to go to town without feel- 

 ing tempted to get out his automobile and go too. 



In larger sense, we are travelers on the Road to Tomorrow. The 

 journey of life is for all travelers. The cradle is the starting point 

 and the grave the destination — no, not the destination, it is only a bend 

 in the road, beyond which we can not just now see. When we come 

 finally to hear the funeral knell it is only a recess bell and school will 

 soon take up again. 



Along this journey there are scenes new and strange, experiences 

 fateful and unfortunate. The itinerary takes in much that we do not 

 expect when w^e start out and goes along new ways that we would not 

 have chosen. The wise traveler over railroad or highway makes small 

 complaint, takes what comes with smiling face and gets from each ex- 

 perience, sweet or bitter, all the good he can. So with life's traveler. 

 If he be wise, he will keep stout heart and smiling face, whatever the 

 rough or easy paths his feet must tread, however the clouds may over- 

 hang, or the crops be spoiled by an untimely rain, but will get the most 

 out of life and be ready for any change in plans and for the last great 

 change. 



Pie has the present moment for employment to the full — the present 

 moment, and no more. Yesterday is dead and tomorrow not alive. 

 Yesterday is wealth expended, which is poverty, and tomorrow is riches 

 unattained, which is poverty. 



We are On the Road To Tomorrow. What that tomorrow will be 

 this day decides. We lift our eyes to a new horizon every time we lift 

 our eyes. Where Yesterday was wigwam and stone axe and spinning 

 wheel, Today is palace for home, the electric current for candle light 

 and carrier, the swiftness of a million weaver's shuttles. On the farm 

 we have put away the reap hook for the reaper. In the school room we 

 have laid aside the blue-backed speller for the scientific treatise. In 



