2o6 
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 bemg4gno- 
rantly skimmed of its richness ; on every side thtre 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 townward. 
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, " stiffnecked.” 
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 
