188 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



principles that were taught him by his mother, and the skill, 

 ingenuity and tact which he inherited, and the first thing he 

 desires is a little farm, and the animals that go with it, to re- 

 mind him of the valley in which he was born, and bring him 

 back once more to the farm of his fathers. There is no taste 

 which adheres to us so persistently as love of the land, and 

 there is none in which there is more happiness or more enjoy- 

 ment. Will it injure our boys, therefore, if they get this taste 

 for the land, and if, in after life, they should return to their 

 homes and embellish those lands their fathers have left them, 

 deserted perhaps too soon ? If you could find, moreover, an 

 intelligent foreman — one who had brought from the Agricultu- 

 ral College the means of carrying on your lands in a way that 

 would be profitable to you — it would fill for you a place not 

 easily filled. If you had a bright, substantial, broad-shouldered 

 boy, that you loved and desired to keep at home — one who, you 

 believe, would make a good farmer and good citizen, perhaps a 

 good selectman or town clerk, or, possibly, a senator in after 

 life — if you had such a boy as that, would you object to having 

 him educated in such a school, more especially if the love of 

 the land which he might acquire there should keep him on his 

 paternal acres ? I do not believe you would. Send your boys 

 to the Agricultural College, then, if you can spare them a year 

 or more in their early education. I tell you it will not destroy 

 the virtue, the industry or the good order of the Commonwealth, 

 to educate thus our boys in the practical service of life, what- 

 ever may be the path which they are destined to tread. 



I have spoken about the education of the boys, and now I 

 have a word to say about the education of the girls — a branch 

 of the Agricultural College which has not yet been discussed. 

 I believe, my friends, and so do you, in female education. I 

 believe in woman having just as good an education for the 

 practical affairs of life as man has. There is no reason why she 

 should not have it — not the slightest. I do not believe it will 

 disappoint a man, if, when he is attending the social circles that 

 gather together in the villages and towns, and is looking about 

 to find a partner to take him by the hand and go along with 

 him through life, he should find a comely woman, who knew 

 how to discuss something besides ribbons and satins and the last 

 gossip of the village ; who had a substantial education, and 



