228 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



our home, and what has come of it, and I hope that will be 

 published and give a little light on the question. 



Mr. J. G. Avery (of Spencer). I have been much in- 

 terested in the lecture this evening, and in one point par- 

 ticularly, — as to the incentive for children to do something 

 to earn money for themselves. When I was a boy, I fell 

 and injured my back so much that our family physician 

 advised my parents to keep me very quiet. My father had 

 a man to work for him on the farm, and his mother came 

 to make him a visit. This was in Connecticut, and she 

 came from Mansfield, a town where they raised silk worms 

 at that time ; and this lady, seeing nry condition, said if I 

 would hatch out some silk worm eggs, she thought I could 

 do that well enough, and she would send me some. My 

 parents talked the matter over, and said if- 1 would like to 

 do that, I might ; and if I could earn some money that way, 

 it would be very pleasant to them and to myself. She sent 

 me the silk worm eggs, and they gave me an attic in the 

 ell part of the house, where I made the shelves of wood, 

 where I could hatch these eggs and feed the worms. The 

 trees from which I got the mulberry leaves were sometimes 

 a mile or a mile and a half away. I went to see all the 

 people who had mulberry trees on their farms, and asked 

 permission to come and pick the leaves. I succeeded in 

 hatching out those eggs and seeing the worms grow from 

 little tiny things until they wound the cocoons, and then I 

 had to go and get brush and put on the shelves for the spin- 

 ning of the cocoons. It was an object lesson I never shall 

 forget. 1 did all that work myself, and made ten pounds of 

 raw silk. I took the cocoons and put them in a kettle or 

 cauldron, and stirred them up and lifted them up to get the 

 ends of the silk, and I wound it oft' myself, and made ten 

 pounds of raw silk, which sold at five dollars a pound that 

 year, — fifty dollars. I thought it was the most wonderful 

 thing, and I was to have that money myself, and the fifty 

 dollars was laid away for me, and did me a power of good. 



Mr. James Draper (of Worcester). 1 wish to say a 

 word or two on the ownership of a tree or plant as a remedy 

 for hoodlumism. I have to be a little personal in the mat- 



