TRAINING FOR COUNTRY LIFE 23 



taught them, looked down upon as they were by their urban neigh- 

 bours, to consider their country callings of inferior standing, and to 

 a considerable extent disgusted them with their surroundings and 

 their opportunities — both of them things which, in truth, they have 

 reason to be thankful for, because they mean health and strength, 

 peace and quiet, and may be made to mean more secure and more 

 abiding, if more slowly achieved, prosperity. 



Now we could not expect country life and rural occupations 

 to flourish under such conditions. Agriculture as a calling — but 

 a calling which altogether governs rural life — has come to be 

 neglected in part because it is not a " fashionable " study. The land- 

 lord's son, going to Oxford or Cambridge — in many enough cases 

 not for the purpose of learning but for the distinction of " having 

 been there " — although he intends to be nothing in particular but 

 a landlord himself, will not enrol himself as a student of agriculture 

 but as a member of such or such college. The average farmer has 

 something like a horror of " book-learning," and, subscribing to 

 King Solomon's rule of " not meddling with those that are given to 

 change," adheres stolidly to his antiquated old leather- jacket tradi- 

 tional system of farming, which fails to " produce." The labourer, 

 with a smattering of town education in his head and out of patience 

 with his hitherto far too poorly remunerated drudgery, has lost 

 his forbear's handiness at agricultural work and his interest in it. 

 The consequence is that he is complained of as being lazy and 

 "inefficient." 



But, apart from agriculture proper, the entire fabric of rural life 

 keeps going down more and more. Men's and women's thoughts 

 stray elsewhere. What used to be familiar to, and cherished by, 

 their ancestors has grown unfamiliar and indifferent to them, and 

 if only every wish that springs up in their hearts were fulfilled, there 

 would be precious few left to people " Sweet Auburn." People 

 would be earning more money elsewhere. Towns and colonies 

 would be swallowing up the erstwhile rural population of our villages, 

 and our beautiful countryside — that "Rural Reign" of which 

 Thomson wrote with pride — would become a deserted wilderness 

 but for the stately " gentlemen's " mansions studding its plains. 



Now these things ought not so to be. We cannot afford to spare 

 our rural life. It would be a veritable sin to do so. And we cannot 

 expect rural life to prosper as a " BB" town life. It has its own 

 essential features, its own characteristics, and makes its own demands 

 upon those who, by their own choice or else by the ruling of Pro- 

 vidence, are destined for it. It has so many advantages on its side 



