44 MISSOURI AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



at home ; and there is really no necessity for anybody to extend you a 

 A", elcome to your own palace. 



Certainly, if the farmer owns or dominates any part of this insti- 

 tution with which you are this week affiliated, it is the department which 

 has for its special purpose the upbuilding and fostering of your pro- 

 fession ; and while in the past the farmer has not felt, perhaps, the in- 

 terest that he should have in this department, and if he has been dis- 

 posed to send his sons • and daughters into other departments of the 

 University to fit them for other professions, that has been because 

 primarily it was the fashion and the custom for the young men and 

 women on the farm to leave the farm and to go to some one of the so- 

 called learned professions, where it was supposed there were greater 

 opportunities and greater success, and, perhaps, less drudgery ; or in 

 other words, it is the old story well illustrated by the answer that was 

 given to a lecturer on social economy when, by way of introduction, he 

 asked "why is it that a married man lives longer than an unmarried 

 man," and some weak, hen-pecked man in the rear of the audience said 

 "they don't — ^it just seems longer." It is human nature to imagine 

 that the good fishing is all on the other side of the stream, that the 

 romance is all in the other man's life ; that trials and troubles and trib- 

 ulations are all immediately around us ; that the landscape far ahead is 

 beautiful, and that immediately before us is full of blemishes and scars 

 and shadows and pitfalls and dangers ; but that is not true — it only 

 seems so. There is just as much romance in your life as you put 

 there ; and how many times have we crossed the stream, perhaps at some 

 peril, to find the water only six inches deep on the other side, while 

 you have left good fishing ; and how many young men have left the 

 farm with good opportunities for success and have gone to the cities 

 and towns to find, as the President of the University has so clearly 

 pictured here, only disappointment and ruin in other professions. The 

 truth is today, that there is no other business that offers the certain 

 success that is so free from dangers, moral, financial and physical, as 

 farming. There is no other business that is growing in importance 

 like farming; no other property enhancing in value like real estate, and 

 no other kind of property that is so valuable ; and the Missouri farmer 

 who owns Missouri real estate and makes the mistake of alienating his 

 title to the same, of selling it without immediately buying more of the 

 same, is making a fundamental mistake. I do not believe in the Euro- 

 pean system of handling the land ; but if it were possible (looking at 

 it from a purely selfish standpoint) to prevent that land from going 

 out of the hands of your children, you would be making one of the best 

 possible investments for your family. If you go into any part of 



