CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION 11 



'will do her perfect work,' and what perfection may 

 we not anticipate from enlightened practice under her 

 auspices?" Having set himself, at this early date, 

 his text, he preached from it at every opportunity 

 during the next fifty years. The need for conservation 

 of national resources was unconsidered in this coun- 

 try in 1847. We were, as a people, newly arrived and 

 spent our riches lavishly. A curious shortsightedness 

 led those with culture derived exclusively through the 

 classical curriculum of colleges to confuse rusticity 

 with vulgarity, to regard the gas-light flickering at 

 the corner of a village street rather than the steady 

 beams of the stars seen over a frosted field, to hold 

 that he who communed with nature must inevitably 

 wear muddy boots and fail to rise above their con- 

 templation. Men were crowding into towns ; the rapid 

 multiplication of manufactures and railroads, giving 

 opportunity for the accumulation of wealth, drew 

 away from the farm the energetic and ambitious 

 who were too intent upon piling together bricks and 

 mortar to consider the importance of increasing our 

 agricultural resources. With the heedlessness of 

 youth, the whole country seemed to admire prodigality, 

 to scorn economy, foresight and thrift. This boy was 

 sixty years ahead of the popular appreciation which 

 today sets scientific agriculture and scientific agricul- 

 tural education in a place of first importance as 

 economic necessities to our national existence. 



In 1848, Samuel Johnson became the possessor of a 

 private laboratory. His father put at his disposal a 

 building on the place at Deer River with the use of 

 laborers and a carpenter to fit it up for his purposes, 

 caused running water to be brought into it, and gave 



