THEORY AND PRACTlfcE. 



TO 



this. What is Education but a twenty-years' fallow, 

 heart-wearying and self-denying of the pleasures 

 that seem to bloom invitingly around us, luring the 

 warm spirits and fresh feelings of youth, to the easy 

 indulgence of more active enjoyment and contact 

 with the world. What is manhood but a continued 

 sphere of the same self-denial, another chapter in 

 the biography of Toil for a future crop amidst 

 the wistful temptation of surrounding fruition. 

 What is Life itself but a fallow and bare enough 

 to many a weary and assiduous toiler a fallow for 

 the future garnering of the joyful crop that was 

 sown in tears.* 



And many such a truthful and intended analogy 

 does the Farmer read, albeit no metaphysical scholar, 

 in the book of nature's symbols. They reach the 



* The utility of the " summer- fallow " is still a disputed 

 point, particularly in America. The value of land, the price 

 of labor, the kind of soil, its liability to weeds all have to 

 do with the question. That "fallows" should le going out 

 of date in England, where land rents from ten to twenty-five 

 dollars an acre annually, is quite natural. Wheat is the only 

 crop that requires the fallow. Yet, we are willing to concede 

 that if the process of plowing, to which our author hereafter 

 alludes, can bo adopted, one great object of the fallow the 

 perfect comminution of the soil will be accomplished. ED. 



