NINTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART XII 723 
Provide a good family orchard, not a commercial one, also enough 
small fruit that tho family can have an abundance. 
Keep a King road drag and use .it at the right time, thereby having 
good roads to use as well as the blessing of your neighbors, who travel a 
greater distance to town. 
Another thing I would do is to insist that the law governing legal 
fences be a hog and sheep fence as well as for cattle and horses. 
If I were running the farm no farm machinery would be left in exposed 
places. It was not made to decorate the fence corners and yards. This 
is profitable to the implement dealer but not to the farmer, and a woman 
would never have iforn out machinery in conspicuous places. 
There is one advantage the farmer has and that is, he is never out 
of a job. There is always something to do and something that is really 
worth while. 
And last, but not least, don't sell your farm unless you have no use 
for it at all. 
HAVE THE PRINCIPLES OF AGRICULTURE A LEGITHIATE PLACE 
IN OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS? 
A. P. HUGHES. 
(Before Poweshiek County Farmers' Institute.) 
In considering the above subject we must not be unmindful of the fact 
that it is occupying a large place in the thought, not only of this, but 
of other countries, some of which have realized its importance long be- 
fore the contracting area forced it on the attention of this country, not- 
ably England and Germany, to which countries we might now well look 
with profit as to the best means to employ to interest our young man- 
hood in the noble occupation of tilling the soil. 
In seeking a solution of the question it is well that we consider the 
object of all schools. The cry that goes up today all over the land is 
for education — it is demanded in all walks, the demand being for better 
brains, brighter brains, directing brains. The question arises, therefore, 
"What is education?" One replies that it is our experience from birth 
to death and is never complete. This is no doubt correct, but education 
in the abstract is the development of the facultuies of the mind which 
gives a distinctive force to the individual; education is the steam by 
which the mental energies are furnished with force, education gives to 
mind clear and vivid conceptions, stimulates its energies and prepares it 
for long and vigorous exertions. It enables one to form a correct esti- 
mate of life and its purposes and developes the constructive and thinking 
capacity. Education is sometimes confounded with information. Some 
have the idea that an educated man should be capable of expressing an 
opinion on any and all questions, but in its truest sense, education is not 
only the acquiring of knowledge but is the art of learning how to use 
the gifts with which we are endowed. 
Understanding, therefore, just what is meant by education, it is im- 
portant that we study those of whom we are the trustees. Admitting that 
