HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 273 



and the Chirurgical, and yet who has that rare insight 

 which enables him to detect and wrestle with disease 

 strangely well. His long observation, his comparison 

 of trifles, his estimate of the moral forces at work are 

 so just and discriminating, that he brings a tremen- 

 dous power of judgment to the case. Put him in a 

 room for consultation, and his gray eye tweaks, his 

 lips work nervously ; he cannot enter into the learned 

 discourse of the younger men of the profession ; he is 

 dazed by it all wishing he were learned, if learn- 

 ing helps ; but when appeal is made to him, there is 

 such clear, sagacious, homely cut-down into the very 

 marrow of the difficulty, as absolutely confounds the 

 young doctors ; all this, not because he does not carry 

 learning, but because he carries brain and uses it. 



Any man with good brains may succeed in farm- 

 ing if he uses them. By this, I mean that any man 

 with a clear head though not specially crammed 

 with information and who brings a cool, sagacious, 

 unblinking outlook to the offices of husbandry, will 

 succeed, without a knowledge of the principles cai 

 which its more important operations are based. And 

 the practice of such a man, if faithfully recorded in 

 all its details, would be of more service in the illus- 

 tration of scientific laws, than the halting experience 

 of a half dozen neophytes, who work by the vague out- 

 line of some pet theory. I had rather have such a man 

 IS* 



