32 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



My subject, then, should be utilit}' and sentiment for, like theor}' 

 and practice the}' should go hand in hand. If bread and butter be 

 uppermost or the acquisition of wealth alone is to be considered why 

 then sentiment may take a back seat, if it ma}' not withdraw from 

 the contest altogether, and let utility hold supreme sway over the 

 mind as it certainly will when the tendency is wholly in that direc- 

 tion. Frugality, economy and the acquisition of wealth are all good 

 things in their way but carried to that extreme whereby the mind 

 becomes so poisoned as to be devoid of all sentiment, so that the 

 planting of a shade tree by the roadside, a fruit tree in the garden, 

 a vine by the door are not to be considered for a moment or, if con- 

 sidered, only as time worse than wasted, then I say that a mind of 

 a Schiller or a Goethe wholly engrossed in song, poetry and senti- 

 ment were far better. 



The French as a people are noted for their economy, but to such 

 a degree has a certain class among them carried their economical 

 habits, thai they can talk of nothing else but how to save here and 

 how to scrimp there till the caller is utterly disgusted. It may be 

 better to pay one's debts rather than to increase them, and extrava- 

 gance in any people is not to be commended, but that spirit of im- 

 provement which is born of sentiment, nourished and sustained by 

 sentiment is to be commended where it leads one to a higher plane 

 of thought and action. 



Looking at the question then solely from the point of sentiment 

 without entertaining here all that is meant by aesthetics or aesthetic 

 culture, it would seem that farm-life demanded something more than 

 the holding of the plow, the swing of the scythe, or the crack of the 

 whip. These and other acquisitions have their place ; they are the 

 necessary and useful accompaniments to a life on the farm, and the 

 more skilled one becomes in their use, the better ; still, something 

 more is required, something that will make that life more attractive, 

 more highly appreciated, nay, I might say, more endurable. For 

 to many is it not true that farm life is simply endured ? It is not 

 loved or appreciated as it ought or might be were farmers properly 

 educated. We cannot have in the country the tense thought, the 

 stirring activities, the mighty pulse-beats and heart-throbs of the 

 great cities, nor do we need them, but we can emulate and follow 

 the growing sentiment of our rural cilies and villages, a sentiment 

 which annihilates the old dogmas of seclusion, high board fences 

 and multifarious shru\)bcry and subalitutes llnerefor the neatly 



