i86 



THE GUIDE TO NATURE. 



good offices of the teachers. But his 

 direct, personal correspondence with 

 the children of the state reached an 

 enormous volume. This part of the 

 work absorbed his full time and 

 strength and the Reading-Course was 

 given over to other hands. He not 

 only wrote to the children, he visited 

 and talked to them in their schools, 

 generally at their urgent invitation. 

 Once each year, when the children of 

 the home county were invited to 

 Cornell for a day, it was not the picnic 

 on the Campus nor the various things 

 to be seen in the buildings which held 

 the foremost place in their thoughts, 

 but the meeting with Uncle John. 

 "You are the best loved man in the 

 state," said one of the colleagues, see- 

 ing him extricate himself from one 

 eager troop, only to be engulfed by 

 another. 



His is a great power, that of reach- 

 ing out and drawing toward him the 

 hearts of the young, and its influence 

 over the thousands of hearts and minds 

 who felt it, cannot be slight nor 

 transient. The children miss him and 

 he will be remembered by them long 

 and fondly. I can perhaps end this 

 article best in his own words, spoken 

 as he was about to leave the univer- 

 sity on reaching the age of retirement : 

 "As the time approaches when I am to 

 lay down this work because of having 

 reached the age limit and return to 

 my beloved 'Bellwether,' and there 

 'mark time' to the end, I can look 

 back in a perspective way over the 

 events of the past twelve years as I 

 have never done before. I can see 

 how the pioneer promoters thought 

 only of the work and never of them- 

 selves or how they would be consid- 

 ered by the public. As for myself 

 I am glad that I have learned to know 

 the heart of a child and that I have 

 lived to see three-score and five years." 

 But though his years are three-score 

 and five he is not old, nor can he ever 

 be old. The spirit of eternal youth 

 vivifies his every thought and act, and 

 his heart will ever be child-like and in 

 full sympathy with the heart of even 

 the youngest of his nephews and 

 nieces. 



FAVORITE SAYINGS BY MR. SPENCER. 



Beware of the ignorance of the edu- 

 cated in plans for the benefit of the 

 plain people. 



My slogan has been to give one thing 

 to a thousand children rather than a 

 thousand things to one. The former 

 is extension teaching, the latter is 

 academic. 



In nature there is nothing so ag- 

 gressive as the impulse for motherhood. 

 The timid rabbit has caused greater 

 devastation in Australia than the lion 

 in Africa. 



The man who can find comradeship 

 in associating with himself has a foun- 

 tain of culture. Life in a "Hurrah's 

 nest" is enervating. The man or 

 woman to whom folks are necessary is 

 to be pitied. 



All plants have an impulse to grow, 

 produce seeds and thereby hold the 

 soil against rivals. The opportunity 

 of the husbandman is to rely upon 

 that impulse and by making plants 

 comfortable, secure a harvest. 



The bane of our education is that 

 it is planned for paragon children. 

 Mediocre children have qualities that 

 the world needs. The gnarled oak 

 gives strength to the ship but is not 

 sought after for quarter sawing to be 

 used in making ornamental furniture. 



When a farm boy carrying wood for 

 the kitchen stove, wood was a bore; 

 carrying ball bats for a game down on 

 the flats was a privilege eagerly sought. 

 Stove wood and ball bats may have 

 come from the same tree. The man is 

 an alchemist who is able to place the 

 same halo about stove wood duties that 

 he finds in ball bat pleasures. 



The soil is the sepulcher and the res- 

 urrection of all life in the past. The 

 greater the sepulcher the greater the 

 resurrection. The greater the resur- 

 rection the greater the growth. The 

 life of yesterday seeks the earth to-day 

 that new life may come from it to- 

 morrow. The soil is composed of, 

 stone flour and organic matter mixed 

 (humas) ; — the greater the store of 

 organic matter the greater the fertil- 

 ity. 



