Father

sang their loftiest lyrics amid their deepest sorrows. Ryan, Hayne, Timrod, Lanier-a wreath of immortelles-what of these? Pancoast says that "Lanier's work is a noble and beautiful addition to American poetry, the full worth of which is not recognized; and there is none among all our poets whose life is more stainless, more lofty, more inspiring. He unites the Southern warmth with the Northern intellect; and, if the coming writers of the great region to which he belongs bring to their work an equal self-consecration to high ideals; if they strive as he did to strengthen the full Southern nature with the rigid discipline of thought and knowledge-we may have a work accomplished which this poet of the New South has left but begun; we shall have a literature more glowing, more passionate, and perhaps even more enduring, than that of the New England school."

The novelist, as the poet, is late in his appearance. John Pendleton Kennedy, one of the earliest, is not inferior in power and originality to Charles Brockden Brown; and "Horseshoe Robinson" is more widely known and more genuinely enjoyed today than "Wieland" or "Arthur Mervyn." Beverly Tucker's "Partisan Leader," in 1836, was a prophecy and forecast of the secession of the Southern States. Miss Warfield, Charles Webber, Elizabeth Bellamy, William Caruthers, Miss Southworth, Miss Augusta Evans, Marion Harland, Simms, Cooke, and others of ante-bellum days show the ability of the Southern mind when turned in the direction of fiction. They compare favorably with the efforts in other sections and can well afford to bide their time.

Did space permit, we might dwell with profit and interest upon the humorists, Longstreet, Baldwin, Bagby and Richard Malcolm Johnson; or upon the scientists, Audubon, Maury, the LeConte brothers, Joseph Ray, the mathematician; or upon the journalists, George D. Prentice, John R. Thompson, James DeBow, D. H. Hill, of national literary reputation; or upon jurists and statesmen, but our survey must be cursory instead of exhaustive and critical. The field is white and inviting, but, sad to say, the appreciative student laborers are still lamentably few!

In the earlier days the song birds clustered in such sheltered nests as Richmond, Charleston, Nashville and Columbia. But

today, from every hilltop and secluded vale, from the busy mart and the lonely prairie-come the song, the short-story, the State paper, the biographical essay, the critical review, as well as the more pretentious novel, history, or scientific treatise. The spirit of literature is verily abroad, and it indites a various language. One feels in the present decadence of literary power in New England, that "the climate and scenery, the history and tradition, the chivalrous spirit and intellectual energies of the South contain the promise of an Augustan age in our literature."

Why are not our writers better known? Thomas Nelson Page says, "The harpers were present at the feast, but no one called for a song!" "As a people," Dr. Link laments, "we have neither honored our singers, nor treasured their songs; not only that," adds, he, "we have not sought to know if their songs had power to charm our ears or inspire our lives." But a change has at last come over the spirit of our dream. The focal point of interest in the United States today is the South, especially the Southwest. Never before has the dictum of literary criticsm been so generous to Southern authors. Magazines invite them and all avenues are open.

Our early authors are now being read; and, being read, are read again, and edited anew. Our literature now has its opportunity; and one risks little in the prediction that as the literature of the renaissant period, and of the national period, and especially our formative period, is collated and studied, will the admiration of the critical student be increased, as regards both its volume and its quality.

What, then, is the manfest duty of our teachers. Whether the field of labor East, South, North, or West, there should be a broad, optimistic, far-reaching spirit exhibited in the selection and presentation of literary productions to our youth. Should we, as teachers, confine or limit ourselves to the socalled masterpieces, how narrow would be our range! Let us get out of the old ruts, seek larger visions, think for ourselves, and look to it that our students profit by our thinking-always remembering that "pride in past achievement is the great regenerative force for the future!"

[ABSTRACT OF PAPER.]

THE BOY AND THE FARM.

O. B. MARTIN, WASHINGTON, D. C.

IT has been truly said that "Education is not for philosophic leisure, and not even for scholarship, but for use." In any system of public education or mass training this truth impresses itself with ever-recurring force. We cannot fail to realize also that education is not so much a matter of obtaining knowledge as of securing efficiency. The amount of scientific knowledge in any line far exceeds the total of general practice in the same line. It seems patent, therefore, that demonstration is more generally needed than experimentation, and that dissemination is more important now to the vast majority than research. The greatest work for educators in this generation is to connect the school and its instruction with the life of the people. This is a comparatively new field, but it is a large one. It is a free field and there is some room for practical pioneering.

It is not simply a question of providing special instruction for farm boys and girls. In the movement for agricultural training is involved the matter of improving the methods of training for all boys and girls. It is a question of understanding of environment, and enlargement of horizon. It is a question of giving sight to those who have eyes, and see not, and of furnishing grasp and relish to those who have opportunities and resources, and yet know it not. It is not altogether the question of keeping boys and girls on the farm, but it is more a matter of giving boys and girls everywhere practical knowledge about, and workable skill with plants and animals, with soils and seasons, and with nature and life. It is not a matter of so much discouragement when a boy who takes a course in an agricultural and mechanical school and then decides to become a lawyer. He will probably make a sensible, practical one, and will sympathize with and know the great body of his clients. At all events he will live in the suburbs and have a beautiful home with flowers and vegetables and a model farm attached. If he should accidentally decide to become a physician he will not do less, and he will appreciate Materia

Medica and the laws of health quite as much as if he had spent four years in the musty classics of other ages. If journalism should claim him, or politics, his writing and his work will be better because of his acquaintance with the greatest production constituency in his State and nation. If he should become a merchant or banker, doubtless he would gradually get some of his profits into the safest of all investments, real estate, and thus avoid the bankruptcy and ruin which frequently overtake business men in the whirlpool of competition and panic. And suppose a boy should be trained to know about gardens and orchards and farms and nature and then decide to become a preacher. Ah, suppose he should! "Behold! a sower went forth to sow!" "A tree is known by its fruit." Every preacher should be required to take a course in agriculture. It should be put into the theological seminaries. Can't we get up a movement to invite them to take a short course in the agricultural colleges? But at least a part of the concern should be for the poor little fellow who walks the streets of the great cities and sells papers for one and two cents a copy, and for the girl who stands on her feet all day as a clerk in a store for $3 or $4 a week. I visited an establishment last week where forty girls were working. The labor seemed confining, but skilled. I turned to the Superintendent and said, "I presume these girls get about $4 a day." "No," said he, "$4 a week." They were fairly well educated, too. Any one of them could take a course in domestic science and soon get $1,000.00 a year. I am hoping that the new training in the schools, the school gradens in the cities, and the agricultural schools nearby, will some day penetrate the crowded tenements and the rustling streets to reach the boys and girls, who must work long and late, in order to secure the necessities of life which are constantly increasing in price. Saving boys and girls for independent, useful and virtuous lives on the farm will be one of the results of sane education in the schools and sensible training out of school. Great opportunities for service open up to young men and women, who expect to be teachers, if they are wise enough to face conditions and read the signs of the time. In fact, whatever the life work is to be, it will not be amiss to consider well the trend of education, so well expressed by Dr. Hodge in the quotation, "Learning

those things in nature that are best worth knowing to the end of doing those things which make life most worth living."

One of the greatest administrators of our country says that the Farmers' Coöperative Demonstration of the United States Department of Agriculture is the greatest system of mass training which has been devised. It reaches a quarter of a million farmers directly, and several times more indirectly. It realizes the importance of origination, imitation, adaptation and cooperation on the part of the membership of the average community. It knows that few originate and lead compared with the thousands who imitate and follow. The demonstration work frequently trains a whole township or county, and in the aggregate, will better a whole civilization.

In all efforts at community betterment it is well likewise to recognize the importance of the same truths, and in the same manner, appreciate the power of suggestion, of direction, of competition, of emulation and of inspection. School officers and organizations in hundreds of Southern communities are rendering effective aid to the Boys' Corn Clubs. The army of 12,500 boys in the South, who have planted their acres of corn this year and studied seed selection, fertilization, cultivation, etc., will have their ranks more than doubled in 1910. In fact, there will be as many as can receive careful attention and thorough supervision. This work is not a mere matter of contests for prizes. It is a plan of continuous study and progressive effort. It is a great correspondence school and hundreds of extension schools besides.

Dean Bailey has said that "An all round education comes from the growing plant." We have had hundreds of boys who have made careful study of corn and then requested bulletins on other plants and animals, also particularly adapted to their sections. It is a good plan in organizing a corn club to have some study at the very first meeting. Some of the most interesting meetings have been held where each boy brought several ears of the best corn he could find and a judging contest was held. Some of the most interesting school compositions that I have ever read were written by fourteen-year-old boys on "Corn Culture," and I have actually known bashful boys to stand up before a courthouse full of people, and tell in good English, how they made their crops. I have never read such