18 Old Days on the Farm 



AEM-CHAm AGBICULTUBIST DEFINED 



I want to set it down as my proudest boast 

 that I was born on a farm and on a bush farm at 

 that. I may have dreamt at times that I would 

 have liked to have dwelt in marble halls but I 

 want to confess that among my sweetest recol- 

 lections are of those days spent in and about the 

 log cabin where I first saw the light. That may 

 be enough to convey the intelligence to my farmer 

 readers that I am with them, going and coming 

 and returning back. 



Now I am not posing as an arm-chair agricul- 

 turist. They are the chaps, you know, who try to 

 tell the farming man how to make two blades of 

 grass grow this year where only one grew last 

 year and the year before. I may be wrong but it's 

 my opinion that many of these members of the 

 Arm-chair Advisory Board to Farmers couldn't 

 tell a chinch-bug from a potato beetle or a pie- 

 plant from a burdock, in actual agricultural war- 

 fare. Likely most of them never pulled the earth 

 about a hill of potatoes. They are full of — well, 

 many big words ending in ology, ism and ics. Re- 

 member what Judge Haliburton in "Sam Slick, 

 the Clockmaker, ' ' had to say about metaphysics as 

 applied to agriculture. It 's worth pinning on the 

 milkhouse door. Sam Slick said this, "All the 

 metaphysics in the world won't make a pound of 

 butter." Was Sam right? If you can't decide 

 ask the chap who works the churn. 



