LITERARY AND BIOGRAPHICAL. 



185 



fever of the war-time clays, when gold 

 was at a premium and gold-mining" 

 the chief industry of the state whose 

 wheat fields and orange groves were 

 later to yield her greater wealth than 

 all her mines ; he sailed before the mast 

 in Pacific Ocean ships and in the 

 "fo'c'sle" listened to the tales of sea- 

 men to whom the great sea was but a 

 highway for the world's trade ; he lived 

 for a year and a half in the Sandwich 

 Islands, when as an independent native 

 kingdom, their commerce and agri- 

 culture were in a state comparatively 

 primitive, when one thinks of their 

 present development and riches. 



But the home claimed him and he 

 returned to the farm. As the years 

 went by the conviction grew with him 

 that the state was doing too little to 

 help the farmer, upon whose pros- 

 perity and content the real welfare of 

 a people rests ; not only the young 

 men, who in those days chose the Col- 

 lege of Agriculture in far fewer 

 numbers than they do now when "go- 

 ing in for an education," but the men 

 and women too old to go to school, and 

 the boys and girls too young to chose 

 a life's vocation, needed that the 

 school should come to them. 



The same thought had been dwelling 

 in other minds, and at the New York 

 State Agricultural College an "Exten- 

 sion Department" had been organized. 

 Mr. Spencer became a member of the 

 staff in November, 1896, and soon after 

 was begun the publication of the 

 "Farmers' Reading-Course Bulletins," 

 and the "Nature-Study Leaflets" for 

 the public schools. Both were carried 

 on by correspondence plan. The col- 

 lege felt a little uncertain of the spirit 

 in which the Nature-study would be 

 received by the teachers. It was not 

 required work. There was no doubt 

 about its value, but it was feared that 

 many might look upon it as only 

 another fad added to those with which 

 they were already acquainted. "Real 

 farmers" too. who held the plow and 

 trod in its furrows, were prone to 

 think that there was little for them 

 to learn from "book farmers." But to 

 the Teachers' Institutes and the Farm- 

 ers' Institutes came Uncle John and 

 his colleagues persuasively declaring 



that Nature's ways had not yet all 

 been found out and that the teaching- 

 offered by the scientific people was of 

 genuine, practical value. 



It was no wonder that the farmers, 

 the teachers, and beyond all others, 

 the children in the schools, responded 

 to the touch of his magnetic person- 

 ality. He was himself a farmer, and 

 had been for years endeavoring to 

 understand the why of agricultural 

 processes as well as the hozv; he 

 could speak from experience. Soon 

 the farmers who were receiving the 

 Reading-Course and returning Dis- 

 cussion Papers were numbered by the 

 thousands, and the enrollment of 

 "Junior Naturalists" was not long in 

 reaching twenty-five thousand names. 

 Increased appropriations for the Ex- 

 tension Department became necessary 

 and the state granted them, believing 

 the work to be well worth while. 



The avowed purpose of both lines 

 of work was to convince the country 

 dwellers that their lines were, in gen- 

 eral, cast in pleasant places ; that "a 

 little land well tilled" could be made 

 to yield as good an income, and one 

 which could be more pleasantly and 

 advantageously disposed, than the 

 same amount of effect could obtain 

 in other ways ; and that if the under- 

 lying principles of their work were 

 better understood, it would be deprived 

 of much of its drudgery. 



The lessons prepared for the pupils 

 in the schools strove to help the child- 

 ren to see what they were looking at 

 and to draw a correct inference from 

 what they saw, sure that such a 

 knowledge of the beauty and use of 

 the common things in the world about 

 them would lead them to love the 

 country better and be content to live 

 therein. They were encouraged to 

 write to Uncle John about what they 

 saw, and to ask questions concerning 

 things they wished to know of the 

 living, growing world about them. 

 And they did write ; for several years 

 the number of letters received from 

 his "nieces and nephews" was more 

 than thirty thousand. Never was a 

 request from a child willingly neglect- 

 ed, though acknowledgments were 

 made whenever possible through the 



