Addresses—Recreation in horticulture . 423 
home with those delights and comforts which need for their crea¬ 
tion not so much a well filled purse, as a cultivated eye and brain ; 
to have a taste for reading, so that his leisure may be partly given 
to that recreation which combines instruction with pleasure; and 
last, though not least, to make a home for his children which shall 
be worthy of the name and of them—a home full of attractions 
and delights, which it shall be hard for them to leave and unde¬ 
sirable to forget—these are some of the qualifications a true 
farmer needs. They are not overdrawn. They are such as some 
possess, but such as the majority lack. 
I plead for a higher education of farmers. I have not only the 
greatest possible respect for their calling, but a stroDg personal 
attraction to it. I was brought up on a farm, have always had 
farmers for my neighbors and friends, am fully half a farmer 
myself by right of both birth and experience. I know the hard 
facts of a farmer’s life, and I even know its pleasant possibilities. It 
cannot be necessary that the calling which lies at the very basis, not 
only of national prosperity, but of national existence ; which brings 
man more intimately in contact with Nature than does any other; 
which has been the delight of some of the greatest and wisest of 
men ; and has afforded a theme for the highest poetic genius in 
all ages since Theocritius and Virgil; it cannot be necessary that 
this calling should be limited and degraded by conditions so ser¬ 
vile as now too often prevail. To put in it more freedom, more 
liberal living, more profit, more honor, I would have farming one 
of the learned professions. I believe the day has already come 
with us when true success in agriculture or horticulture is the 
result only of intelligence and skill. 
You know a child is “ pleased with a rattle, tickled with a 
straw.” The soberness of more mature age cannot be thus moved. 
So it is with the soil of our country. Some years ago in its virgin 
infancy, when even slightly “ tickled with the plow it laughed 
with the harvest.” Now the most persevering efforts at mere 
u tickling ” are seldom rewarded with more than a “ smile ” in the 
way of crops. That is, the conditions are changed. The super¬ 
abundant fertility is gone. Skill must now effect the results 
which rude labor once produced. And as a consequence of this, 
