Well do I remember the morning I left this healthy, natural way of 

 living on the old farm. That morning father brought the old farm 

 team hitched to the "spring wagon" to the door of the farmhouse and 

 loaded in the trunks and my sister and I climbed in and we drove away 

 to attend the Academy fifteen miles away. We looked back, waving 

 our hands to mother standing on the porch and taking a lasflook at 

 the old farm through our tears. Little did we know that we were 

 starting off on an entirely different line of life that would even make us 

 strangers to our good father and mother. We were going from the 

 real existence to one of books and passivity. We were to cram our 

 memories with second-hand thoughts from others. No more initiative, 

 no more freedom, no more activity, but a daily routine was planned 

 for us and we were only receptacles being crammed with words, words, 

 words, cold and dead. There we were left to mingle with other boys 

 and girls who came to get a ' 'higher education." I shall never forget 

 the hungry heart and utter lonesomeness as I sat in that little scantily 

 furnished dormitory room next morning with the morning sunshine 

 pouring in at the window. I was a prisoner in this little room with a 

 strange stack of books on the cheap table. From the branches of a 

 tree below the window sang a bird, a little song sparrow, and it sang 

 such a sad, sweet song that I leaned my head on my arm and cried. It 

 sang of the glad, free life that I had left behind on the old farm. How 

 I longed to be at home with my pigs and calves and lambs and chickens. 

 Was it right that the little bird should know so much joy and freedom 

 while I must set out on this long road of slavery to so-called education? 



The days dragged by and I dutifully studied my lessons, going 

 from my little room to the classroom and back again to the little 

 bare room. 



I had a great sense of duty or my aching heart would have sent me 

 back to clover fields and corn fields and cool, shady forests. How 

 often have I sat and stared at the bare walls of that stuffy little room 

 and tried to imagine the glories that were going to waste out under the 

 blue sky on the old farm. My muscles ached for exercise. They were 

 growing soft and flabby. It took sheer force of will power to keep me 

 from fleeing from such an unnatural life. Why could there not be a 

 way of going into the fields and forests and studying the beauties of 

 nature first hand? 



Object lessons are the only ones that leave much of an impression. 

 Memory of words will never make feelings of joy, gladness, ecstacy, and 

 buoyancy, but instead tend toward a dead, cold, callous nature without 

 any of the finer emotions. Why should we make the mistake of taking 

 our boys and girls out of the real active life around them and set them 

 aside to study things so foreign to the good and welfare of their 

 physical and emotional existence? We take them out of life to prepare 

 them for life, and how sad the mistake! We need a school that will 

 lead us to take great pleasure in producing beautiful flowers, or growing 

 choice vegetables for the table, or in evolving perfect animals useful 

 to man. 



We need a school where the emotions are cultivated, the more 

 human and finer feelings, that will make us more sensitive to the 

 beauties all around us so that we can revel seeing with our eyes the 

 pretty color of flowers or perfect shape of animals, or go into ecstacy 



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