206 GARDENS AND THEIR MEANING 



no easy road ; it is hardly too much to say that they have 

 been whipped to it by degradation and misery. Through 

 discipline they are at last attaining self-respect, brotherhood, 

 and economic prosperity. 



These experiences from overseas set us thinking. We 

 begin to suspect that the troubles of the agriculturist are much 

 the same the world over, and that they may be traced to the 

 same general causes. Let us turn this new light upon the 

 situation at home. The condition of the average farmer of 

 whom we have spoken is the culmination of events for years 

 past. Looking back, we see a land of promise being igno- 

 rantly skimmed of its richness ; on every side there is woeful 

 waste of land and labor ; and we see, in proportion to the 

 resources of the soil, strangely low standards of happiness and 

 opportunity. We see streams of boys and girls, who have 

 been tutored by city-bred teachers to admire and long for city 

 ways and occupations, moving steadily town ward. 



Of those left stranded on the old place, however, a large 

 proportion are groping along by guesswork ; their occupation 

 has generally been taken up by chance, not by choice; they 

 are impervious to new methods in science or business. But 

 a greater obstacle to success than ignorance of scientific 

 methods is the solitude which has often made an otherwise 

 fine character cranky or, in country phrase, " stiff necked." 

 Who cannot bring to mind such a figure, at once impres- 

 sive and pathetic ? It is his obstinacy ("independence" is his 

 name for it) that drags back every step that he would take 

 toward progress and prosperity. In fact, even when " Farmer! 

 farmer!" is sung out from one school child to another, it 

 teases not so much because it points at ignorance or baggy 

 clothes or at mere physical awkwardness as because it im- 

 plies that peculiar and aggravating angularity of mind which 

 remains sharp and unrounded from lack of sympathetic 



