No. 4.] PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND AGRICULTURE. 411 



district is often composed, to a great extent, of farmers' 

 children. Let their work not only l)e recognized, but en- 

 couraged by the offer of substantial premiums. Let those 

 premiums not be confined to excellence in scholarly lines, but 

 embrace noteworthy success in farm work, gardening and 

 floriculture ; but in all cases stand for exhi1)itions by school 

 children. There has been, hitherto, too much interest in the 

 farmer's pigs, and too little interest in the former's children ; 

 too much in his cultured acres, and too little in his uncultured 

 home. If we would elevate the standard of agriculture, it 

 must be by means of personal intelligence, cultivation and 

 refinement, brought to bear upon the se^'eral departments of 

 farming life. Something may be done for those now on the 

 stage, but our hope lies in the oncoming generations of the 

 future. Let the annual fair be an educational institution, 

 Avith a serious purpose, and not a field-day for impostors 

 and mountebanks, nor yet a carnival for blacklegs in dis- 

 guise ; for, if there is one class which may be said to 

 be pre-eminently prejudicial to the legitimate interests of 

 agriculture, that class is the sporting fraternity, and, under 

 whatsoever o-uise it seeks to commend itself to recognition, 

 it should be most jealously circumscribed. 



In the efibrt to furnish rational instruction and entertain- 

 ment at these festivals, the farming community should be 

 induced to turn not only their barns but their cottages inside 

 out, and so exhibit, alongside the marvellous results of indus- 

 try and skill which make the farm profital^le, the evidences 

 of those higher endowments which render irresistible to 

 its members the attractions of the farmer's home. And here 

 belong those emanations of taste, ingenuity and skill, the 

 fruits of amateur studies or industrious leisure, which mean 

 that life is not all drudgery, nor life in a farm-house a mere 

 struiia'le for existence. 



If this phase of home industry could be so encouraged as 

 to l)eget a generous rivalry, if that rivalry could result in 

 making the homes more attractive, and that attraction hold 

 the young even a little longer to their childhood's allegiance, 

 who can measure the benefits to American citizenship ? "By 

 such means," in the language of a contemporary-, "is to 

 come the civic salvation of the American people." 



