obtain distinction
by some great agricultural achievement, a discovery of new laws or a new
combination of old laws; all their love and hope find expression in the
determination "not to bring him up to farming." They "don't mean he
shall ever have to work." Hard work and small profits is the story of
their lives and of the lives of their ancestors, and they do not believe
any other story will ever be truly told of the genuine farmer. And when
we say small profits, we wish the phrase to hold all the meaning of
which it is capable. It is hard work and small profits to body and soul;
small profits to heart and brain as well as purse. But every plan which
looks to better things is "notional," "new-fangled," "easier to tell of
than 'tis to do"; and so the farmer goes on his daily beat, with a
shamefaced pride in his independence, fostered by the flattery of his
county-fair orators, yet vituperating his occupation, bemoaning its
hardships, and depreciating its emoluments, stubbornly set in the belief
that he knows all there is to know about farming, and scornful of
whatever attempts to go deeper than his own ploughshare or cut a broader
swath than his own scythe.

To suggest the possibility that all this is the result of limited
knowledge, and that the most favorable and beneficial change might be
found in a more liberal education and a wider acquaintance with the
facts discovered and the deductions made by science, would be considered
by a bold yeomanry, our country's pride, as an outbreak of
"book-farming" in its most virulent form. "You may bet your hat on one
thing," says the bold yeoman,--"a man may know sunthin', an' be a good
minister an' a tol'able deacon, but he's spiled for farmin'."

Two words are beginning to be coupled in the newspapers and to float
about in the air, whose juxtaposition is the cause of many a demure
chuckle among the rural population,--"Agricultural College." Separately,
the words command all respect; united, they are a living refutation of
the well-known axiom that "the whole is equal to all its parts." On the
contrary, so far are our farmers from believing this, that, while they
acknowledge each part to be a very serious and important fact, they look
upon the whole as the flimsiest of fallacies.

"Gov'ment is goin' to build an Agriculteral College. Farmin' an'
learnin' marry an' set up house-keepin'. Guess Uncle Sam'll have to give
'em a hist with a donation-party now 'n' then. Agriculteral C