HORTICULTURE IN THE DISTRICT SCHOOL. 463 



HORTICULTURE IN THE DISTRICT SCHOOL. 



PROF WM. ROBERTSOX, MINN. COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE. 



Near the beginning: of the present term in the School of Agricul- 

 ture, an enterprising journal of Minneapolis sent a reporter out to 

 take a straw vote of the students for president. The headline argu- 

 ment the next morning was, that as the father in politics and in 

 religion so the son. 



The conclusions drawn were not far from actual results. But 

 why limit the list to politics and religion? If the father thinks thai 

 hens will do for the old woman to fool with, and lets them roost in 

 the corner of some old shed or on the harvester, you will generally 

 find that the son will kick at a chicken if it comes in reach of him. 

 If the father has no time for the garden, the son will feel that his 

 mother makes a great fuss about nothing when the pigs get out 

 and root the garden up. The very fact that a hog always heads for 

 the garden when he gets loose ought to be a suggestion to some 

 men. If the father thinks that two instead of seven is the right 

 number of times to plow the corn in a season, that will most likely 

 be the sentiment of the son. If the father thinks the cow ought to 

 be kicked and the horse jerked to make them understand, the son 

 will be of a like opinion. The son not only thinks these things 

 because the father thinks them, but because the father acts them 

 the boj- acts them, and they become the habits that fill up the space 

 of his life. You may tell him better, and he may agree with you, 

 but when it comes to action, there is on one side conviction, on the 

 other habit. When that cow gets into the wrong stall, there is the 

 kick repeated one thousand times, and the better way told to him 

 once; when it comes spring there are back of this man the year after 

 year in which the garden did not figure, and before him the state- 

 ment that the garden is a good thing; later in the season there is 

 before him the little paragraph in his farm paper, saying how much 

 better the mowed lawn looks, and back of him years and years when 

 the grass and weeds have grown up, flourished and died together. 

 Which will lead him? 



Oh, how we sometimes wish that we could get all the people in 

 range of our voice or pen, could get their clo^e attention for a brief 

 space and then have them go ofif and follow exactly our advice! 

 What an elysium we would make of this old world of ours! But 

 they don't do it, so we get discouraged and think that reforms and 

 improvements will never come. But did you ever think that if 

 people would be so easily led by the advice of one individual, they 

 must be as easily led probably in the opposite direction by the next 

 individual? And if we have not made a success of one life, how 

 shall we direct that of everybody else? 



No, it is not so great a discredit to a people as is sometimes 

 heralded to say that "they think the same thoughts that their fathers 

 have thought, and tread the same paths that their fathers tread," 

 although it throws on the fathers a responsibility that is not 

 always appreciated by them. It indicates that there must be a 

 training and ingraining into the life from the Brst, and gives the 



