138 RURAL LIFE IN CANADA 



Her ruddy and golden butter to churn 

 From the milk of her butter-flies; 



And I'll rise at morn with the early bird, 

 To the fragrant farm-yard pass, 



As the farmer turns his beautiful herd 

 Of grasshoppers out to grass. 



Yet lie accepts his recreation from town. With much 

 better cause might he discount amusements of the Coney 

 Island type proffered him from the city than flout its 

 well-meant social guidance. 



The country is lacking in means of education adapted 

 to country life. Here we touch upon one of the most 

 direct and active causes of loss of rural population. 

 Those boys and girls who take fullest advantage of the 

 public school go on to the high school, business college 

 or university, and almost invariably enter teaching or 

 other of the professions or business life. A two-fold 

 injury is wrought by our present educational system. 

 Not only are some led directly from the farm. Others, 

 seeing no connection between their studies and life, lose 

 .ill interest in study, and take up the tasks of the farm 

 unprepared to appreciate what is best in farm life. 

 Every child is entitled to an education that is at once 

 cultural and vocational. A vocational course lays the 

 foundation for technical or professional skill and effi- 

 ciency ; it should also show the pupil how to use his 

 vocatio as a means of personal growth, intellectual 

 and moral, and how to make his vocation a means of ser- 

 vice to his fellow-men. There is a one-roomed public 

 school within my congregation, at Ventnor, where for 

 the past three years there has been a school garden with 

 experimental plots cultivated by the pupils. Last year 

 the chief kinds of fodder plants were the subject of ex- 



