No. 4.] AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. 151 



prepared Ijecause of his insight into the sciences, his habit 

 of close observation and attention which had been cultivated 

 by his study and the nature of his training. I might give 

 many other instances, had I time, of students who have had 

 no intention whatever of becoming farmers ; and we cannot 

 be expected, of course, to graduate all farmers. 



And further, I may say that no professional school suc- 

 ceeds in turning out all its graduates as men who take up 

 the profession for which the school was especially designed. 



Mr. Elbridge Cushman (of Lakeville). Mr. Chairman, 

 I have been interested in the paper to Avhich we have 

 listened, and I was particularly pleased that the speaker 

 presented that composition of one of the junior class 

 giving his testimony to and his appreciation of the Agri- 

 cultural College, and as we have heard from two pro- 

 fessors from that college here this morning and one 

 of the students, I arise at this time as a plain, com- 

 mon farmer of the Old Colony, living 150 miles from that 

 college, to add my testimony and to tell what I know of 

 the advantages of the Massachusetts Aii'ricultural Colleo:e 

 to the farmers of the Old Bay State. When my friend 

 from Plymouth County asked the question, from the best of 

 motives, I know, how many of the graduates of that college 

 become farmers and tillers of the soil, husbandmen, and 

 the answer comes back, over fifty per cent, I wish to say to 

 my fellow farmers of Massachusetts that I know from per- 

 sonal contact with tillers of the soil that were but half as 

 many of the graduates of that college pursuing our calling 

 every dollar that has been taken from the treasury of our 

 Commonwealth would have been well expended. I wish to 

 say to you, brother farmers, that in my intercourse with the 

 farmers of Massachusetts, as I meet them at farmers' insti- 

 tutes and within the grange halls of our State, wherever I 

 come in contact with a graduate of that collesje I find a man 

 earnest in his calling; I find a man at the very head of his 

 profession, a man who is looked up to ; and I have never 

 yet come in contact with a graduate of that college, in what- 

 ever profession he may have chosen for his life work, who is 

 not an industrious, earnest man in his calling. I have the 

 greatest faith in the future of that college, and if I had been 



