36 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



cultural Society, who no doubt has a message for us, and I 

 know we shall all be glad to hear from him. 



Dr. Twitchell. Years ago in a town in the State of 

 Maine there was a family every member of which was 

 determined to have a college education. The father died, 

 and the mother struggled on, and son after son grew to 

 years of maturity; a mortgage was placed on the farm, 

 until finally the last son was ready to enter college. No 

 one of them as they graduated had been able to make any 

 practical use of the education received, but it was still in 

 the mind of all that they must go through college. The 

 mother finally went to a friend for assistance, and he was 

 talking about it in a store afterwards, and in that store there 

 chanced to be a good old farmer who was full of what you 

 would call "horse sense." He listened awhile and then 

 said, "Well, I tell you, I don't see any sense in so much 

 edication without any larnin'." It seems to me that we 

 must seek to combine the two in this work of our boards 

 of agriculture ; that the thought of education must be 

 uppermost, as it was so well stated by the speaker, and we 

 surely must endorse every word he has spoken this after- 

 noon. The distinction seems to be made that there is a 

 high and a low education. There is no low education. 

 Education along the line of what we would call " the prac- 

 tical " is high and helpful, and will always be of service in 

 the world. How is this Board, *and the other boards of 

 agriculture in New England, to be of service — the greatest 

 service — to the farmer ? It seems to me that there are one 

 or two ways we might mention to which particular stress 

 has not been given, but which were covered in the admira- 

 ble paper we have just listened to. I have found, in what 

 little experience I have had with our boards of agriculture, 

 that the best success has been secured when the institutes 

 were held in strictly farming sections. That does not hold 

 with these winter meetings, where we seek to accomplish 

 specific results. I am thinking, friends, that the man out 

 there is the one we want to reach. You who have studied 

 these questions all these years and become familiar with agri- 

 cultural sciences have gotten them well grounded in your 

 being. But there is a man down yonder, a young man who 



