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taught us when we were young to read, write and cypher, and 

 the best schools cannot do much more. That is all very well, 

 very important. But it is by no means enough to know how to 

 read, write and cypher. The question is do we read, write and 

 cypher, and keep on doing it after we have grown up ? 



Do we read ? — for instance, that is, establish and maintain open 

 and large communication with the world of mind, and keep taking 

 in knowledge, light, strength and inspiration, from all those, the 

 multitude of the living and the dead, who stand ready to supply 

 them to us through books ? Do we read, or only rest content with 

 knowing how to read ? 



And do we wTite ? — that is, do we possess and exercise the 

 faculty and habit of giving a connected and visible expression to 

 our thoughts ? To make out a bill of sale and sign one's name to 

 it is not writing, in any intellectual sense of the word. To think 

 clearly, logically, connectedly, and be able to put down one's 

 thought and feeling in fair, grammatical sentences, so as to com- 

 municate the thought and feeling from one mind to another, — that 

 is alone writing. And what proportion of the farming class, or 

 indeed of almost any class, do that or can do it ? 



And, then, do we cypher ? That means something more than 

 doing, or having once done, the sums in the school arithmetic, or 

 being able to foot up a column of figures, or cast the interest on a 

 promissory note. It means, or ought to mean, the keeping our 

 powers of calculation, of analysis, and of severe accurate reason- 

 ing, in vigorous and habitual exercise. Mere school-cyphering is 

 not worth much, as mental culture, except as a preparation for 

 this. 



When farmers do actually read, write, and cypher, as well as 

 know how, they may consider that their minds are getting well ed- 

 ucated, and not before, — neither farmers nor anybody else. 



I should say that a farm itself contains and presents opportu- 

 nities for mental culture, and of the noblest sort too. To carry 

 on a farm with a high intelligence and in the best manner, observ- 

 ing all the facts, and studying the capacities and adaptations of 

 soils, seasons, weathers, winds, markets, keeping an ear open to 

 all suggested improvements, and a mind keenly discriminating be- 

 tween the real ones and the seeming, to master what is valuable 



