212 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



this difference, the country is able to contribute better blood and stronger 

 intellects than the city, on the average. 



, Only ten in a hundred; that proportion won't hold good in the prisons 

 — I have tried that, too. But we don't contribute anything like our share, 

 and I hope there isn't a person before me who regrets that lack of 

 contribution. 



It has been said, "Give me good agriculture and I will give you good 

 politics." There is a lot of philosophy underlying this. It is one of the 

 places where agriculture does not contribute as much as it should, it does 

 not contribute as much to the forces which control the country, as its 60 

 per cent of stock entitles it to. 



A man is not your friend who tells you that you are bound hand and 

 foot; it is not true, and if it were true, I am not quite certain that he 

 would be your friend to be telling you of it. I have always been hoping 

 for more confidence, and in these institutes, held under the auspices of 

 the Board of Agriculture, I look for great things. They will help to 

 spread true knowledge over the country, hoping it will stimulate to 

 better action and furnish a means by which we can concentrate our 

 forces. Yet there is little in routine farm work to stimulate the mind. 

 I have a 300-acre farm, and I have plowed that farm all over, myself; part 

 of it, several times. There is nothing in that plowing that stimulates the 

 mental activities. I get the horses out, harness them up, run my fingers 

 up and down beneath the horses' collars, and see that the collar is 

 smooth and all right; I snap the lines and the tugs, place the line over the 

 right shoulder, under the left, and feel a little serious. I chirrup to the 

 horses. They start up seriously. I, being a Yankee, kick the furrow 

 with the right foot; if I have a Dutchman, he wants to kick with the 

 left. There is nothing about that that stimulates mental activities. 

 When I hit a stone, my mental activities are aroused; but around we go, 

 round and round, and the satisfaction in it is, that we have succeeded in 

 turning over quite a breadth of land, and we go home pretty well satisfied 

 at night, with a good appetite. This is first rate, but I tell you that some- 

 how, the farmer has got to have extraneous mat+ers to stimulate the 

 intellect. 



We liave reached the place where the brain must do the work, 

 and the muscles can rest more and more, and while we are resting, we 

 ought to be devising a way to stimulate the mental activities. Know- 

 ledge is power. That was said before I was born. That is more true 

 today than it was fiftv vears ago. More emphatically true, and we need 

 it. ' 



There is another thing about the farmers. They look at the dark side. 

 Let us look, instead, with bright eyes and earnest desire and hope, for 

 the silver lining that is said to underlie every cloud. Let us give thanks 

 and rejoice that things are as well with us as they are. Gather all the 

 information you can. 



Another thing, contributing as we do, proud as we ought to be of the 

 contributions we are able to make, kind as the Ruler of all is to us, we 

 are not loyal enough to our calling. 



I was once the guest of Prof. Vaughan of our University, and they 

 Invited me to attend a club meeting that night, composed of President 

 Angell and all the professors, I guess. There was a paper read at the 



