158 MISSOURI AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



Our field for thought and obtaining knowledge is not limited. Do 

 we wish a diversion, it is at our door. Combine with the study of 

 producing the best live stock, the elements that enter into the soil, the 

 crop best adapted, the fertilizations necessary both to maintain and 

 supply the needed elements, the selection of the best seed, the quality 

 of the seed needed in the selection of the foundation stock for the flock,, 

 the orchard and the field, and use of sires to maintain and increase the 

 value of the flocks and the herds ; the selection of the soil for the field 

 and the garden, then combine with all this the most approved methods 

 for the cultivation and with this all a love for the beasts that graze the 

 field, and you have before you a life's work worthy of the best efforts 

 of man. Boys, do you want to leave the farm and enter mercantile 

 pursuits? Remember ninety-five per cent fail; for every merchant 

 prince, thousands have been made bankrupts. Would you prefer one 

 of the professions and seek eminence through its channel? Remember 

 there is "room at the top," and few there be that get there. Is it your 

 ambition to build your monument in the political field? Let me warn 

 you the path is strewn with broken hopes, and yet the Presidency is 

 not beyond the reach of those who till the soil. If our ambition leads 

 us to reject the farm, the flock and the herd, to seek political fame,, 

 remember it's the roughest and most uncertain road. We are re- 

 minded of some of the greatest Americans, Henry Clay, Daniel Web- 

 ster, John Jay, Thomas B. Reed, James G. Blaine, and many others, 

 whose hopes were blasted when they were seemingly in reach of the 

 topmost round. Would you abide on the earth and live to bless man- 

 kind and the lower animals, whom God created for your benefit? 

 Stay with the field, the flock and the herd. The improver of live 

 stock is truly a benefactor ; he who causes two blades of grass to grow 

 where only one did live, and the cereals of the earth to double their 

 former yield, is a double blessing to mankind, and history does not 

 withhold her tribute to such. The grand old Scotchman, Williara S. 

 Marr, had three sons, one a minister and the other a doctor, and the 

 late W. S., Junior. I doubt if there is an American today who would 

 have ever heard of them but for the venerable sage of Upper Mill. 

 The monuments we build at the graves of our dead, are for naught 

 but to keep our memory green, but the marble will have crumbled 

 and the granite broken long before the names of Colling, Bakewell, 

 Booth, Bates, Mainard, Ducie, Campbell, Cruikshank, Marr, Duthie 

 and a host of these and others who developed different breeds of 

 cattle, as well as all those who have bred and fed well, will have been 

 forgotten. No, gentlemen, it is not only our privilege to write our 

 names indelibly on the tablets of time, but to enjoy beyond measure 



