l6o WE FARM FOR A HOBBY 



pared to rush out an emergency prescription any 

 time day or night, and at the drop of a hat. The 

 countryside is dotted with competent physicians, 

 lawyers, priests, preachers, and hex professors. The 

 consolidated grade and high schools can be reached 

 either by the school buses or ten minutes' walk. 



I started this chapter by saying we came to the 

 country because it is a better place to bring up 

 children. In the way of formal education our coun- 

 try public schools are the equal of those in the city 

 and, of course, far superior to private schools. How- 

 ever, from the educational standpoint, my conten- 

 tion of the country's superiority has little to do with 

 formal education. On the strictly material side 

 the city offers practically no chance to the child to 

 learn how it lives. It will be a long time before I 

 forget the day I took the nine-year-old daughter of 

 some friends, who had driven out from the city 

 of a Sunday afternoon to see how the Tetlows 

 were getting along in their igloo, to see the day- 

 old chicks. It was the first time the child had ever 

 seen infant chickens. After she had admired and 

 observed them a while she turned and pointed to 

 a duck, fattening in a near-by cage. 



"And is that their mother?" she asked. 



Now, that episode is not funny. Here was a 

 child, considerably above the average in intelli- 

 gence, who did not know a duck from a chicken. 

 It is a moral certainty she did not know beef comes 



