158 THE CONNECTICUT POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



your children are going to acquire the principles of pomol- 

 ogy sa necessary nowadays to be applied in your business. 

 The school is the place where Connecticut citizens are going 

 to be clothed with a much greater power than was enjoyed 

 by their fathers or grandfathers, or by anybody who was 

 an inhabitant of this state at that time. This is only an il- 

 lustration. It is a tremendously broad question. I do not 

 mind saying, however, tlial in spite of the fact that His Ex- 

 cellency has just left the room, compared with the question 

 of educating your children the question of who shall be the 

 next President of the United States is relatively unimpor- 

 tant. I may feel differently about it alont^ next October. I 

 presume we all get heated up pretty well when the political 

 spirit becomes strong, and we are apt to think that the desti- 

 nies of the nation depend upon the election of a particular set of 

 electors on that day in November that is coming pretty fast. 

 But, after all, whoever he is, he cannot do half as much harm to 

 the country, if he is bad, as poor schools, and he cannot do half 

 as much good for the country as good schools. So I 

 will venture to say to you, ladies and gentlemen, that the 

 question of whether your schools in this commonwealth are 

 good, whether the teachers are competent, and whether they 

 are paid enough to command their best services, whether the 

 equipment is such as to put into the training of the children 

 of the twentieth century just what they should have, — those 

 questions are about the most important ones that can come 

 before you. If I was to try to advise the people what to do 

 I know what I would say, and while I feel perfectly confi- 

 dent at this moment that that advice would be the best that 

 could possibly be given, I am not going to do it, because 

 those things that a man realizes because of his experience are 

 seldom the things which he is able to attain. A man who 

 sits down and works out a scheme or plan for the advance- 

 ment of society, according to his way of thinking, very sel- 

 dom' does the work, and it is hardly to be expected that he 

 would. It is not because of the opinion of one man that 

 such things come to pass, or because of the agitation of one 



