PARMERS' INSTITUTES. -15 



A. E. Palmer: Yes, wlien open ditches are not practicable. ^ 



Q. What is the cost per yard to crush tlie rocks V 



A. E. Palmer: 22yo cents. 



Q. Do yon have to buy hard heads? 



A. E. Palmer: Yes, we buy them near the place where the road is to be built. 

 They cost us fro^m .$3.00 to ^5.00 per cord, an average of $4.50. It costs 25 cents 

 per cord delivered on the wagon ready for spreading on the road for crushing. 



Q. What effect does winter have on the completed road? 



A. E. Palmer: Frost doesn't affect it, if well drained. 



Q. Do you crush coarse graved for the bottoim of the road as well as the top? 



A. E. Palmer: Very coarse at the bottom and finer toward the top of the road. 



WEDNESDAY EVENING. 



J. ^A'. Hutcliins, presiding. 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF FARM LIFE. 



J. T. DANIELLS, UNION HOME, CLINTON COUNTY. 



Every one ougiit to have among his possessions that of which he is 

 justly proud. I am proud of the fact that I am a farmer — that I am a 

 member of one of the grandest of the "professions,'' that of the farmer — 

 and I am fully possessed with the belief that nowhere on this round 

 earth and in no walk of life are there any better opportunities for the 

 building wp of a true manhood and of a true womanhood than are found 

 within the reach of the average American farm-home. 



But what constitutes the "ideal" manhood and the "ideal" woman- 

 hood to which we would, in our better moments, respectively attain? For 

 I believe that each one, at h4s best, really and truly desires to be all that 

 God purposed that he should be when He gave him existence, endowed 

 him with immortality and placed him in this "preparatory state;" and 

 if we ever reach that high estate designed for us it will be through the 

 use — right use — of means, and in no other way. Life is, truly, a great 

 school, and as we reach the years of discretion, and most of us do, sooner 

 or later, we naturally ask ourselves what should be 



THE MAIN OBJECT OF OUR EXISTENCE? 



And this brings to us, right here, the opportune question: What are the 

 possibilities within the environments of the average farm-life, for the 

 attainment of life's true object? 



Are not our lives quadrilateral with mental, moral, social and physical 

 sides and though very uneijual may be the side and very "angular" some 

 of its angles; yet the general form is thus. Is it not, alone, through right 

 use of time, talents, opportunities and material things, that our highest 

 possibilities are to be reached? 



A lawyer friend, with whom I was conversing, said to me, "The average 

 farmer has, or may have, at his command, more leisure than have those 

 engaged in other callings." Doubtless some, perhaps many, of those 

 present will feel inclined to dispute the correctness of such assertion, but 

 I am certain there is much of truth in it. It is, most surely, not the lack 



