ARBOR DAY ITS HISTORY AND OBSERVANCE. 



35 



make farming pleasant and profitable, how to increase its attractions, how to keep 

 the boys on the farm are some of the problems of our times. There are mysteries of 

 Nature which a well-educated agriculturist can solve with profit and pleasure. Ten 

 acres scientifically tended can be made as profitable with less labor as one hundred 

 acres carelessly cultivated. The brain should relieve the hand. Education should 

 abolish drudgery. There is profit as well as poetry in "a little farm well tilled." 



Then let us make a place in our educational system for schools of agriculture and 

 horticulture. Our agricultural colleges have their places in the system, but they 



are beyond the reach and above the heads of a great majority of the boys who are 

 to be the farmers of the future. While our common schools are laying the founda- 

 tions of an all-around education, let us give our children practical lessons which 

 will help on the farm. We may not teach all our boys to be farmers, but we may 

 give those who go from the schools back to the farms a knowledge which shall arouse 

 a love and an enthusiasm for agricultural pursuits which they could never other- 

 wise obtain. This love would do more than any other influence to keep our boys on 

 the farms. It is the child who shows most enthusiasm in study and in play. Then 

 let us teach our children the simple lessons in botany, chemistry, geology, and 



