TU'ENTV-FIRST ANNUAL MEETING. 173 



of that mental and moral dynamite which we call education, 

 and which is the right and the duty of every man to have. 

 I am speaking of that moral power, and that mental power, 

 the intellectual power which should be within the reach of 

 every child, every boy and girl with which to blaze their 

 way in the world, and with which to rise to positions of hon- 

 or, force and influence. 



You ask me how it is to be attained. How can you do 

 it? You have got to do it my friends. You have got to 

 bring your farm education down deeper and closer to the 

 common people. You have got to do it. It has got to be 

 done. If you would save your state, and your hillsides, if 

 you would save your towns, if you would save society, it 

 has got to be done. (Applause.) I know a man who is a 

 prosperous farmer. He had no children. He started a hired 

 man. He had gained a home, and he thought the time had 

 come when he could leave off hard work and take life easy. 

 There was a place on his home for children. He took a 

 child to bring up. Its parents had died. The child was put 

 in that man's home to bring up. It was one of those hate- 

 ful, ugly characters which you meet with now and then 

 among children. A most hateful, abnormal and unlovely na- 

 ture. Well, the farmer took him. He wondered what he 

 could do. One night the struggling man sat down before an 

 open fire to think it over. If a man wants to get close to a 

 thing let him sit down in the comfort and quiet of his home 

 before a grate. The old man sat there and watched the wood 

 burn slowly. It slowly passed away into flame like the end 

 of a human life. The man sat there wondering what he 

 could do with that unlovely and that hateful child. He was 

 not a religious man. He was not a Bible student, but as he sat 

 there, out of the shadows liehind him there came over his 

 mind an old text which in former years he had heard a 

 preacher use. "Who had sinned? This man or his parents?" 

 It gave him a new thought. This child may not be responsi- 

 ble for his hateful character. Perhaps I have not been pa- 

 tient with him. He got up and lighted a candle, hunted up 



