52 ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



THE LIBKARY AKD THE FARMER. 



PROFESSOR C. E. MANN, GENEVA. 



What would you do with a million dollars if you were suddenly to fall 

 heir to it V A foolish question perhaps. But how diverse and very strange 

 would be the answer, whether given in words or acts. Yet every child at 

 its birth falls heir to larger and more lasting possessions and his disposi- 

 tion of them is quite as strange. 



This world is doubtless extremely old and every generation that has 

 left its bones upon it or within it has left also material, mental or moral ac- 

 quisitions, Each generation has learned to do something, think something, 

 idealize something. The men who have lived before us have learned to plow, 

 to plant, to paint, to conceive the beautiful and then to chisel it, to think 

 nobly and then to write and finally to print their thought. They have built 

 ships, and houses and bridges and railroads and factories ; have constructed 

 empires and kingdoms and even republics. Some have doubtless thought 

 they could rear their families well, manage their wives shrewdly, build their 

 line fences and their religious and political creeds to suit themselves and 

 their neighbors; in fact to do many intricate, valuable and perplexing things 

 and after all very few thoughtful ones have had the hardihood to say that 

 they have learned how wisely and rightly to live. So to meet this long felt 

 want doubtless is the reason for the organization of this association and this 

 meeting. 



For ages men philosophized and theorized about the nature of another 

 world, almost forgetting that they were in this. They debated with great 

 warmth and supposed wisdom the character of spirit and how many angels 

 could stand upon the point of a cambric needle, when it would seem to some 

 of their doubtless degenerate sons they might better have discussed the use 

 to which they should put their bodies and how large a family they could 

 support upon the attenuated extremity of their income. One of the things 

 most to encourage a thoughtful man as he tries to trace the progress of the 

 world, is the fact that men are coming in all lines of thought to consider as 

 important the homely, everyday facts of life— that cattle even need pure 

 air and sunshine, that pigs may be made to thrive in clean pens on sweet 

 straw; that love supposed to live on air with a little odor of rose water, will 

 thrive best in kitchens that have proper arrangements for drainage and the 

 slops not thrown out of the back door; that the orthodox three steps between 

 the summer kitchen and the dining room may be safely omitted. I am 

 pleased most firmly to believe that the thoughts of men do "widen with the 

 process of the suns," and yet from living for the first twenty-three years of my 

 life under a farmer's roof and from having since been thrown much among 

 farmers I am forced to believe that the intelligent, shrewd and kindly care 

 of his stock and surroundings is too often wanting when applied to his fam- 

 ily ; that he salts his cows and curries his horses oftener than he inquires 

 after the mental and moral growth of his children, oftener than he buys a 

 new book and sits and reads to them or hears one of them read to him as 

 they all sit about a bonny ingle. We have no need to ask a blessing on 



