82 Missouri Agi^icultiiral Report. 



those boys ought not to be excluded from the public schools just be- 

 cause they have to be at home, helping their fathers and mothers, during 

 the busy seasons of the year. They do go to the public school at the 

 end of November, and try to enter, but the rural school is modeled after 

 the city school and not planned for the country boys ; and when that 

 sturdy country boy, who has been growing while helping with the 

 seeding and harvesting on the farm, attempts to sit down in those 

 seats he finds he doesn't know what to db with his feet and his hands, 

 and he cannot study well. He goes back home and says he doesn't 

 want to go to school because they laugh at him. He wants to learn, 

 he does not want to be ignorant, but he will not go to school to be 

 laughed at. I need not tell the whole story, but it is true — this and a 

 great deal more. And so it was for these boys, and girls, that we es- 

 tablished our School of Agriculture, and the first year we had over 

 100 students enrolled. Some say that "book knowledge" is not of 

 much account; we had in our district a father who sent his motherless 

 daughter to our school to learn cooking and sewing, and he stayed at 

 home and ''batched" for five months; and if that does not mean that 

 education is worth something, or that that father thinks it is worth 

 something, then I don't understand human nature. That girl would 

 like to have taten the whole course, but she had to go home and take 

 the place of a mother and care for the home. In those five months, 

 however, she got a great deal of good out of the course, and had learned 

 how to be more useful and happy than before she went to school. 



When I was a student in college and the professor was five minutes 

 late we would all give the call to "bolt," and when we M^ould meet the 

 professor coming up the stairs we would not see him. Last winter when 

 our professor in stock judging failed to get to his class the boys waited 

 ten minutes; then they went out of the room, but not to escape a class. 

 They all came into my office and I could not turn them away ; I had 

 to find some way to interest them during that class hour, and I had to 

 go after that professor and tell him he must not be absent next time. 

 They were so eager for instruction that I had to take them into the 

 lecture hall and talk to them on some agricultural subject during the 

 hour. They come to school for business, to study, and they do study. 

 It is one of the most wonderful things in the world to watch the 

 changes that come in a boy's face after studying in the School of Agri- 

 culture. When the students go home to the old farm at Christmas 

 time they will look over the live stock and sometimes decide that it is 

 not good enough. I remember that one boy, who was interested in 

 horses and had been studying horse judging, went home and said: 

 "Father, you have a lot of old plugs here. Let's get rid of them." I 



