THIRTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART IV 167 



and probably not say anything but what some of you have read more 

 or less in Wallace's Farmer over and over again. If you haven't, you 

 ought to. 



But I was thinking of another line, I was just wondering if you 

 realize how much of the best things in this world of the revelations 

 from heaven come through stockmen, how much of our Bible is written 

 by stockmen. I have commenced to study the Bible lately. I have 

 been looking at it also in the line of the sto.ck business as well as 

 other things. Now, it is supposed that Adam was a stockman. That 

 isn't true at all. He was a gardener, a horticulturist, the father of all 

 the insect pests. Of course they fead no stock in the antediluvian days 

 because they didn't eat meat. They were vegetarians. I don't know 

 whether that is why they lived so long or not. But when you come 

 dov^^n to Noah, they were allowed to eat meat. The old fellow went 

 into the horticultural business again, and you know what happened to 

 him. He got <lrunk. Really, the first great big stockman was Abraham. 

 I was just reading today about that long trip that he made, six hun- 

 dred miles northwest to get over the fords of the Euphrates and five 

 hundred miles to get down to the promised land of magnificent stock 

 country. Now, he traveled and roamed around there, but he went 

 down to Egypt and got into trouble and had to be ordered out. And 

 then I was thinking about that grandson of .his, the fellow that put 

 the spots on the cattle. If I ever meet him, I am going to ask him 

 just how he did it, because I never could understand it. (Applause.) 

 Then the next big fellow that we read about was a man named Moses, 

 that was city born and city bred, a graduate of the University of Egypt, 

 but he never amounted to a hill of beans till he got out in the country 

 with an old stockman, married his daughter, lived there forty years, 

 and that is the fellow that gave us republican institutions, representa- 

 tive government. And he got the idea from that old ranchman out 

 there, his father-in-law, 



Novv, you go on down through all those old Scriptures, and you 

 will be surprised to find the number of men through whom God has 

 revealed His will that were stockmen. Take David. He was a good 

 many other things besides a stockman; had some of the stockman's 

 faults and some of his virtues, a splendid good fighter and liked the 

 women. But you know he is the man that has voiced the highest emo- 

 tions of human nature in all ages, and many of his old illustrations 

 are those of the stockman. And there was Solomon. He was a big 

 farmer as well as a good many other things. And so on, you might 

 go on down through and see to what extent religious thought and 

 philosophy and the highest conceptions come through men that were 

 stockmen. Look at Amos, the farmer herder of Tekoa and the gatherer 

 of sycamore fruit. And do you know "the glad tidings of great joy" 

 that came to all people were first heard, not by the lawyers in the 

 temple, nor the priests, but by shepherds watching their flocks by 

 night — stockmen like you and me. (Applause.) 



President Sykes: I have been a very busy man today. Somehow 

 it has fallen to my lot to preside over this gathering from ten o'clock 



