22 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



ator Dolliver said to me the other day. Fie came to m\- house. 

 I don't know that he would have come, (jnly that it suited his 

 convenience. He owns a farm in our county and it suited his 

 convenience to stay all night. In walking about the yard and 

 talking about different things, he said to me, "Let me tell you 

 one thing that I have observed in my study of men. There is 

 not a man in New York City today, and I don't know but what 

 he said in Washington, that was tall enough to l>e seen beyond 

 the Mississippi, but what walked up from the plow furrow. I am 

 proud of the farmers; I am proud of the farmers' boys and 

 the farmers' girls. I believe this much, I do not know whether 

 you all agree with me, that the sum total of human happiness 

 stands upon a higher plane to me among the farmers L)f the 

 United States of America, and more praticularly among the 

 farmers of the greac commonwealth of Iowa, than any other 

 class of people on God's green earth." 



It has been said to me, why don't you get off the farm — 

 trying to make me believe I was out of my sphere — I am just 

 exactly where I want to be. I am just exactly where God Al- 

 mighty intended me to be. I was bom on a farm and I have 

 no desire to leave it. But these two papers, the one by the lady, 

 and brother Secor's, just touched every fibre in my heart ; it has 

 been an uplifting to me. 



Last winter the president of our Humboldt County Institute 

 'phoned up to me and w^anted me to get up a program for the 

 farmers institute. It was only the year before that w^e dis- 

 cussed the necessity and possibilities of the value of the tele- 

 phone — you know that was the inspiration — and before the next 

 institute we had it all over the county. I want to tell you about 

 the value of that telephone. Do you know, w^e had t^venty- 

 seven different subjects upon our program and I 'phoned evtvy 

 one of these to the men and ladies from my own home and as- 

 signed them their subjects. If I had gone to them individually, 

 I would have had to drive one hundred and fifty miles. The re- 

 sult of it was, we had a splendid institute; a grand thing; an 

 uplifting. I know young men and w^omen, farmers and their 

 wives, who never stood up before an audience, but we worked 

 them in, got them on the program, and we drew out the hidden. 



