86 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



Doubtless there are lads in this city who) 

 know that sweet potatoes grow under and 

 and water-melons above ground. So every 

 boy learns something of medicine and 

 law, during his boyhood. He knows that 

 when his head or his side aches, he is sick 

 and needs physic ; and that if he steal, he 

 is a rogue, and the Jaw will punish him. 

 But such knowledge does not make him a 

 lawyer or a doctor. I believe that boys 

 pick up during their minority as much and 

 as useful knowledge about law and medi- 

 cine, as they do about farming. But, not- 

 withstanding, the harvest of wild knowl- 

 edge, if I may so call it, we send our sons 

 to law and medical schools, where they 

 are made to read and study what never 

 was, and never will be law in this State ; 

 and to hack and hew the bodies of dead 

 men in a style and fashion which they can 

 never practise on living men. Yet we owe 

 all that is good in lav/ and medicine to this 

 sort of training in professional schools : 

 which, as long as it is mere training, and 



o m to > 



if we look at it only as training, seems the 

 veriest nonsense in the world. But so 

 evident are the advantages derived from 

 professional education to them who have 

 enjoyed it, nay even to us on whom the 

 lawyers and doctors practise their skill, 

 that if a man should begin a crusade 

 against law schools and medical schools, 

 and propose to abolish them, he would be 

 met with a more deafening cry of " non- 

 sense, nonsense," than now meets the 

 friends of agricultural education. We see 

 the advantages derived by other profes- 

 sions from proper educational training, but 

 continue to educate our farmers, as some 

 folks keep their cattle, on the commons, 

 which may be a cheap way, but not praise- 

 worthy, nor profitable in the end. 



The sons of most of our wealthy farm- 

 ers are educated from home. They are 

 sent to school at fourteen or fifteen, and 

 are never at home again for a long time 

 till of age. In all this time they learn 

 nothing of agriculture away from home, 

 unless it be a little of the wild kind ; and 

 but little more at home ; for the guns and 

 the dogs, the horses and the girls absorb 

 the moments of vacation. Twenty one 

 comes — the lad is a man — and he goeth 

 forth to farming. Now is this proper pre- 

 paration for even the simplest, plainest, 

 commonest operations of agriculture? Let 

 us suppose that two years — nay, even that 



one year, of this educational period had 

 been spent in attendance on the lectures 

 of a sensible man about farm -work in all 

 its various and complicated branches ; and 

 in reading the essays of such writers as 

 Thaer, Stephens, Colman, Skinner, our own 

 Ruffin and a host of other wise farmers — 

 is it not probable that our sons would re- 

 turn from College a little less verdant 

 about farming than they generally come. 

 They would at least learn how to make a 

 compost-heap, and the value of it when 

 made. That would be something: But 

 might they not learn a great deal more ? 

 Might they not learn the proper seasons 

 for all kinds of work — the best methods of 

 culture of our various staple crops — the 

 most approved preparation, saving and ap- 

 plication of manures — the true piinciples 

 of grazing a horse, and constructing a 

 plough, gate or cart — something of drain- 

 ing, subsoiling, &c. — something of the val- 

 ue and expense of the different kinds of 

 enclosures, and a thousand other things, 

 all useful and necessary to be learned ? 

 Would the knowledge of all these things 

 be any less valuable — nay any less practi- 

 cal, because learned from a sensible pro- 

 fessor in a lecture-room, where a hundred 

 others were learning them, and talking 

 about them, than if acquired from an in- 

 dulgent father, or some opinionate over- 

 seer ? No man in his senses can think it 

 would. As far as my observation goes 

 [and I have had some experience in mat- 

 ters belonging to teachingj, fathers are 

 not the best teachers of their children ir 

 any thing but honesty. There are excep- 

 tions no doubt — Tom Benton is one. But 

 he is an exception to many other rules, and 

 so proves nothing. I think that the most 

 conceited youths in the country are boys 

 educated entirely at home. They get 

 father's notions, and with them father 

 knows every thing. I hardly know a case 

 in which a father, who had a smart son, 

 would not benefit both, by sending the son 

 away from hometo attend lectures and read 

 [books on agriculture for a year. Whei, 

 I the son returned home he would be able 

 1 to profit more by his father's experience — 

 ■and maybe, teach something to ihe old 

 gentleman himself. Hqw often has it hap- 

 Ipened in Virginia that a father has given a 

 | fine estate to a son, and established him as 

 | a farmer, whom, if he had been another 

 I man's son, he would not have kept as an 



