504 [ASSEMBLT 



Yet what do we find of peculiar applicability to their pursuit ia 

 the education of our youth who are to become farmers! Greek and 

 Latin! Belles Leltres ! Declamation! and these exercises absorb the 

 greater portion of the four marvellous years that constitute the col- 

 legiate quadrangular! What would be our estimate of the father 

 who placed his son with a lapidary to learn the trade of upholstery? 

 Now, sound for me the wisdom of the farmer, who plants the son 

 that is to succeed him on his estate, in a lofty marble-columned 

 academy, where he daily vociferates " hie, hcec, hoc/^ mumbles over 

 the dry bones of antique philologies; takes morning rides in the 

 silken balloon of " fine writing," or works himself up to an awful 

 oratorical rage in declaiming " Gods! can a Roman Senate long 

 debate which of the two to choose, slavery or death!" or that 

 equally as novel passage, " Romans! countrymen and lovers! hear 

 me, for ray cause, and be silent, that you may hear!" And then, 

 too, when the hopeful scion of ihe plain, sturdy, honest husbandman 

 emerges from the '' sacred shades of the Academy," flushed with a 

 thousand collegiate honors — his head stuffed with odds and ends- 

 from Cicero, Virgil, Tom Moore, and "the Perfect Elocutionist," 

 and his dear soft white hand flourishing on high the illuminated 

 sheepskin, for which he paid precisely ten dollars, and which ta 

 him is worth precisely nothing — then what triumphs do I see await- 

 ing him in the field! how Ceres trembles with delight to behold his 

 exquisite waist! how the barns exult in the anticipated crops which, 

 those fair hands are to produce and gather! how — but, gentlemen, 

 the majesty of the scene is becoming too oppressive. I must leave 

 the elaboration of the picture to more appropriate harids, fashionable 

 barbers and tonish tailors. 



The classical college, however fitting it may be for others, is 

 not the institution in which our agricultural youth can be properly 

 educated. They need a school of their own — a school devoted to 

 such knowledges as are required on the farm — a school whose aim 

 will not be to make them elegant linguists, or " very fine writers," 

 or handsome declaimers — but sound, unostentatious, practical philoso- 

 phers — true American farmers, who can and will ornament a country 

 whose political father was an educated agriculturist, choosing the 

 scythe in preference to the sceptre, sheathing the sword of successful 

 revolution in the sheaf of the harvest, and for a diadem wearing on 

 his broad brow the blessings of the myriad farmers whom he libe- 

 rated. 



A large number of our citizens have proposed the founding of an 

 Agricultural School and Experimental Farm. The Legislature has 



