NATURE STUDY. laa 
leave home to enter these institutions in the hope of acquiring as large a 
quantity of the regulation diet as their mental calibre will allow. 
An educated gentleman, a physician, once said to the writer, that the 
great fault he had to find with the general education of children was that 
their brains were chiselled off to fit the education, instead of the capacity 
of the brain being taken into consideration and the education made to fit. 
All grades of mental capability, the average, the bright, the brighter, the 
brightest, are squeezed through the same knot-hole. In other words, ex- 
cept in rare cases, the individuality of students is lost in the squeezing, 
crowding, pushing, chiselling they are forced to undergo before the coveted 
sheepskins are placed in their hands; and possible, first-class, up-to-date 
farmers, mechanics and business men are turned loose upon society as sec- 
ond or third rate M. D.s, D. D.s, L. L. D.s, who are in no wise prepared for 
the conflict with life. They have acquired erroneous ideas as to the value 
of their advanced education. They find the professions so overcrowded, 
that, with few exceptions, it is only the sharpest, the most unscrupulous that 
succeed in gaining patronage and earning more than a bare living; and the 
result is the lowering of the standard of morality in order to keep up with 
the pace set by the favored few. Or perhaps, deterred by the gloomy pros- 
pect, they drop down to the level of the ordinary work-a-day people, feeling 
disappointed that their education has not proven a good wage earner for 
them. Looking at an education in that way belittles the knowledge ac- 
quired, for a good education should be a great help to the farmer, business 
man or mechanic. 
Why this reckless, unthinking rush for book education? The child brain 
instinctively seeks for knowledge; it must have it to round out its experience 
as a living being. It will have knowledge of some kind. Is the child to 
be its own guide as to its needs? Is it to rush headlong into the race fora 
certain goal, wholly without thoughtful consideration as to its fitness for 
the struggle? All the others are going, and he wants to go! 
Let the thoughts that follow be applied to rural life. Humanitarians 
acknowledge that farm life is susceptible of being broadened, that it has 
withih its resources the possibilities of a well nigh perfect earthly existence. 
Poets call upon nature, in its varied forms as manifested in the: country, 
to give them inspiration to picture scenes of peace, content and happiness, 
while if misery, sorrow and trouble are to be their theme the cities furnish 
the material. 
Country folk themselves intuitively sense this condition of their environ- 
ment and would be content if only certain features pertaining to their daily 
life could be different. The chief drawback to their happiness is that it is 
difficult to hold their children to farm life. As long as children remain 
factors of the home, parents and children are united by a common interest; 
but if they make homes in the cities, straightway a barrier arises between 
them. The parents feel lost in the rustling, rushing, busy cities, they are 
like aliens in a foreign land; the children find. the home farm life too slow, 
too vapid, too sleepy, too small, for more than a short time there at Thanks- 
giving or Christmas. 
Oftimes the children that go to the cities are not successful. They are 
among the vast throng who struggle from hand to mouth to keep body and 
soul together, and yet they would not give up the uncertainty of city life 
for the peace, content and assured comfort of farm life. Is not this true? 
