ADDRESSES 277 



and how can they, from their very numbers, be educated at 

 college? And then the expense could never be encountered 

 by the farming interest, nor could the sons be spared from 

 the farms, nor would it be desirable to so break up their 

 habits as farmers as to put them under one, two or more 

 years' tuition at college. Besides, colleges are made for 

 professional men, not for the people, and their mission 

 never was and never will be to educate the million." Mr. 

 Jackson said that if a boy learned to read, write, cipher, and 

 spell, he would make an excellent farmer. What need of 

 science? The good old way of his fathers was sufficient. 

 It was only the old story told by George Eliot in the "Mill 

 on the Floss," and it is Farmer John who speaks: "What 

 I want," said he, "is to give Tom a good eddication, — an 

 eddication as 'ud be bread for him. That was what I was 

 thinking of when I gave notice for him to leave the academy 

 at Lady Day. I mean to put him to a downright good 

 school at midsummer. The two years at th' academy 'ud 

 ha' done well enough, if I 'd meant to ha' made a farmer of 

 him, for he's had a fine sight more schoolin' nor ever I got. 

 All the learnin' my father ever paid for was a bit o' birch at 

 one end and the alphabet at the other." 



And even our good Governor, who has charmed us this 

 morning with his reminiscences of the past, is reported as 

 saying that all this matter of agricultural education was 

 mere nonsense, — that he had always said that the agri- 

 cultural college would be a failure; that it could not succeed 

 in the nature of things, for as soon as you educated a boy, 

 he would leave the farm. Consequently, the conclusion he 

 came to was, that all the education a farmer got he would 

 have to get at the tail of a plough. 



