AN IDEAL COLLEGE. 383 



telligence? Is all the verbiage with which our schools are 

 loaded down until physicians are crying out against the murder 

 of the innocents, so much better than &quot; paying knowledge to 

 future farmers, paying skill to future mechanics, self support 

 and God-birthed liberty to women? 7 



Another thing for the farmers to consider seriously in respect 

 to the necessities of agricultural education is, that we need one 

 institution at least free from the temptations to college extrav- 

 agence, where plain living and high thinking can be illustrated 

 in all the appointments. Extravagant buildings, which in some 

 States have cost more than the principal of the congressional 

 grant, no matter how they are obtained, are undesirable for our 

 purposes and work. 



President Anderson, of Kansas, once a resident of the Golden 

 State, thus pictures his ideal of the Agricultural College of the 

 future : 



Some day, and somewhere, there will be an agricultural college 

 looking so much like the grounds and buildings of a prosperous 

 farmer, who did his own repairing and manufacturing, that we of 

 the present happening by, would mistake it for a little hamlet of 

 thriving artisans, built in the heart of rich and well-tilled fields. 

 Nothing in its appearance would suggest our notion of the typical 

 college. Its barns, sheds, yards and arrangements would embody 

 the idea of the greatest utility at the least cost. Its implements, 

 stock, and fields would show them to be used for real profit. Its 

 orchards and gardens wouldnot only reveal the success of the owner, 

 but, also, his full determination to enjoy the fruit with the labor. 

 We would be quite certain that it was only such a farm the best spec 

 imen of the highest type were it .not for the presence of cheap, stone 

 buildings, one or two stories, scattered among the trees ; all of them 

 more resembling mechanics shops than anything* else; some exactly, 

 others, not exactly ; and yet no two alike. One would be used for 

 teaching practical agriculture, but would as little prompt our idea 

 of a recitation room as the whole cluster would that of an imposing 

 college edifice. &quot;While there would be seats for hearers, and a place 

 for a speaker, yet the latter would most suggest a circus ring for the 

 exhibition of short-horns, when short-horns were discussed ; of horses, 

 pigs, or sheep ; of surgical operations ; of plows, harrows, or reap 

 ers. The walls would be lined with photographs of famous herds, 

 working models of farm machinery, the grain and stock of cereals. 

 Part of its surrounding ground would be belted with every variety 

 of growing grasses; and another would be for the draft-test of im 

 plements, or the trial of student skill. In fact, it would look, and 

 be so like an actual workshop of real farming as not, even in the re 

 motest way, to squint toward the article generally yclept &quot; scientific 

 agriculture.&quot; The interior of another shop, a few rods distant, and 

 equally inexpensive, with its grafting-tables, potting* benches, pack- 



