ADDRESS, 



THE SOOIAL AND INTELLEOTUAL LIFE OF THE FAKMER 



BY REV. L. S. KOWLAND, OF LEE. 



There is a story that an Englishman, a Frenchman and a German were once 

 requested each to write a treatise on the elephant, an animal that neither of them 

 had ever seen. The EngHshman, with his thorough-going practical instincts, took 

 the next steamer for India in order to get his knowledge at first hand from his 

 study of the animal in his native haunts. The Frenchman, following his literary 

 proclivities, began at once to ransack libraries for works on the subject, that he 

 might know what other men had thought about the elephant. The German, in 

 sublime reliance on the power of his a pHoH philosophy, sat down in his study to 

 evolve the abstract idea of an elephant from the depths of his own inner con- 

 sciousness. 



In responding to the request of your president to speak to-day on the Social 

 and Intellectual Life of the Farmer, I am soiTy to say that I must follow to a large 

 extent the method of the German. Though a son of the soil myself, my youth- 

 ful proj^ensities were so strongly in another direction that I fear I did not profit 

 much by my agricultural experience, as I am certain that agriculture did not prof- 

 it much by me. My reading of books has been as remote as possible from the 

 agricultural Une, and so I am thrown back on the inner consciousness as my main 

 rehance in the emergency. I am not certain, however, that my lack of practical 

 experience as a farmer is altogether a disqualification for the service to which I 

 am called to-day. Farmers doubtless need, as do other men, to see themselves as 

 others see them. The outside view may for some purposes be quite as important 

 as the inside view. It is possible that looking at your calling as an observer and 

 critic, I may say some things as worthy your attention as if I had always had a 

 place itoiyour ranks. At any rate I have less scruple in speaking vdih. such slen- 

 der re^nrees to draw from, that I know 1 cannot mislead such practical minds as 

 yours ie-ven if rl cannot instruct them. You, gentlemen, have all seen the elephant, 

 andrwjlltfbffftble to tell at once whether my description of him is a portrait or a 

 caricature. 



THE WEAK SIDE OF AGEIOULTUBAi LITE. 



, Itiis- ifty.eoi\viotion that my topic touches agricultural life on its weakest side. 

 It^ j^i^Sg^^esB iij $OGial and intellectual influence as compared with most occupa- 

 tip^&x-J-tJaBir|erw tticrtjghtful and candid minds will question. It is so from its na- 

 t^^iij^e :f4ile§st4ifg^ i iicumstances difficult to control Three limiting or binder- 



