212 GARDENS AND THEIR MEANING ■ 



come true, can harness themselves up and tug and pull. Our 

 country needs, moreover, young people who so keenly want 

 to get at the truth that they will tease nature with their ques- 

 tions and never stop till they get the right answers, with all 

 the proofs. Especially does it need those rare persons who 

 know how to intensify their own working power by joining 

 with others in a common cause. This is the essence of the 

 new agriculture. 



And now what does the new agriculture give in return .? 

 A wholesome life : sound lungs and a good appetite, together 

 with the means of satisfying it and of providing for others 

 liberally. It presents a business opening, not always of the first 

 rank from the money standpoint, to be sure, but first in returns 

 that are better than dollars. It offers a life brimming with 

 opportunity. The days are not long enough for the marvelous 

 tales and the wonderful songs that Nature, the old nurse, sings 

 when, set free from anxiety and from too much drudgery, the 

 practical farmer and the poet meet on common ground. 



Again, agriculture gives a life scholarship in the best labo- 

 ratory that the world has ever known, — a workshop where 

 every investigator may confidently look forward to the exhila- 

 ration of discovery, while the discovery itself will add- directly to 

 his own and his neighbor's welfare. It would be hard to find 

 another calling which offers to workmen of all grades such gen- 

 uine possibilities. Is it not true that most breadwinners expect 

 little else than — like dull, superannuated car horses — to trot 

 monotonously along the track laid down by some corporation .? 



Finally, the true agriculturist is a pioneer. He discovers ; 

 he subdues. A campaign against the stubborn, subtle forces 

 of the earth demands sacrifice, fortitude, heroism. These 

 qualities make the martial spirit, — that love of battle which, 

 it is said, cannot and must not be tamed within us.^ But 



1 William James, Moral Equivalent of War. 



