'THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH" 



old memories are far removed from " official 

 utterances," with which they have no affinity, 

 though I may, perhaps, remark, with some know- 

 ledge of officialdom, that it does not follow that 

 they are the less reliable on that account. Official 

 communications take life very seriously, and rarely 

 lift the veil which conceals the world behind the 

 scenes from the gaze of ordinary mortals ; whereas 

 reminiscences, if they are good for anything, 

 generally do, and herein lies the main distinction 

 between the two. 



When I first came into direct contact with 

 agriculture and its exponents there was a much 

 wider gulf between town and country than there 

 is at the present time. But a deal of water has 

 flowed under the bridge since the days when the 

 townsman, so long as he had cheap bread and as 

 much of it as he could both consume and waste, 

 knew little, and cared less about, how and whence 

 it came. Agriculture was mostly outside his 

 purview, except as a medium for hostile criticism 

 of landowners and farmers. But, even previous 

 to the war, there was a growing manifestation of 

 interest in the greatest of national industries, and 

 now that the ordinary citizen has had it forcibly 

 brought home to him that our very existence is 

 bound up in the prosperity of agriculture he is 

 making himself much better acquainted with the 

 conditions under which it is carried on. 



That the " old order changeth, yielding place 

 to new," is as true of agriculture as of most other 

 mundane matters, and it is doubtful whether, 

 during any period of history, this has been more 

 distinctly emphasized than it has been within 



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