Address. 1 



ou demonstration. This is what our children want — not mere theoretrical 

 study, not a college education in the old sense, but an acquaintance with 

 the physical sciences carried along pari passu with their work on the 

 farms, thus combining the knowledge of principles with their constant ap- 

 plication. In addition they want more from us than mere bed and board 

 and a chance to work hard. They need our sympathetic encouragement, 

 our instillment of the belief that agriculture can be the noblest employment 

 of mankind, an application of ail the knowledge we possess or can acquire, 

 and at the proper season an appreciation of their efforts by a partnership 

 or interest in the profits of the farm. By this course 'we shall be co-workers 

 in raising up a class of scientific practical agriculturists, who will be pre- 

 pared first to be successful in a moderately bad climate and a comparatively 

 sterile soil like that of New England, and eventually to stem back the tide 

 of slovenly cultivation threatening to overwhelm us in the West, and raise 

 our country to its normal position of the leading agricultural country in the 

 world. 



The mottoes of our country are emphatically, Peace and Labor. We 

 desire to be at peace with all, and to provide the means of support by 

 nonest labor to all. We claim that labor, whether of the head or hands, is 

 alike honorable, and that more true glory is won by increasing the fertility 

 of the earth, by the invention of implements which lessen the toil of the 

 hand workers, than by creating new engines of war, or even using them 

 successfully against our fellow men. Sir William Jones in an eloquent 

 panegyric, nearly a century ago, said "he who makes two spears of grass 

 grow where but one grew before, is a public benefactor far in advance of 

 the noblest chieftains, who aided by armies and the enginery of war, sack 

 cities carry conquest onward only to conquer, subjugate and desolate king- 

 doms." If that sentiment was true of the art of agriculture in its infan- 

 cy, how much greater will be the glory of those, who, aided by the ex- 

 perience of the past, educated by the schools of the present and future, 

 shall not only make two but dozens of spears of grass grow where but one 

 grew before, shall restore by scientific effort the fertility of the ravished 

 soil of the virgin West, and double and treble the products of the exhaust- 

 less farms of the older sections of the country. Of these efforts it may 

 well be said: 



" The plough and the sickle shall shine bright in glory, 

 When the sword and the sceptre shall crumble to rust, 



And the farmer shall live both in song and in story, 

 When warriors and kings are forgotten in dust." 



