56 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



Many farmer's sons — and it is a notable proportion in 

 New England, as compared with other sections of our coun- 

 try — do, however, possess in a varying measure the desire 

 and the ability to acquire knowledge beyond that supplied 

 by the common school. We speak of these young men as 

 ambitious. But what are their ambitions? They are, as a 

 rule, just what we should expect them to be. As these 

 boys sit around the home fireside, many of them listen to 

 the exaltation of riches, professional skill, official power and 

 forensic or literary distinction as the highest attainments. 

 The volumes of the histories of men and of nations which 

 they thumb tell them, not of farmers, but of legislators, 

 orators and poets. These dreaming, ambitious lads, when 

 they look across future years to the shining delectable 

 mountains which they mean to climb, see visions, not of 

 the humble farm, but of the counting room, the physician's 

 office, the halls of legislation, the forum or the pulpit. 

 Possibly when in later years they shall stand in the valley 

 of disappointment, or when from some height of power or 

 distinction, hungry for peace and rest, their thought returns 

 to the deserted farm, here and there one may wonder why 

 some wise soul had not shown him more clearly the values 

 that are real. But the eager youth does not possess the 

 clear vision of maturer age, and so, stirred to action by the 

 story of the ages, he joins in the race for distinction. 



Now it does not appear, so far as I have been able to ob- 

 serve, that the fathers and mothers on the farm are as a rule 

 out of sympathy with the course which their sons pursue in 

 seeking distinction where distinction has always been found. 

 The critic of agricultural colleges is prone to assume that 

 farmers and farmers' wives are anxious for their bright boys 

 to stay on the farm ; but I do not so interpret their pride in 

 the career of the merchant, physician, lawyer or clergyman, 

 whose college education was made possible through then- 

 hard work and persistent economy. I have found from a 

 knowledge of individual cases that this defection from the 

 ranks of agriculture is regarded with the utmost complacency, 

 even satisfaction, not only in the homes most interested but 

 by the rural communities that take great pride in the suc- 

 cessful men they have sent into the business or professional 



