=The child as the objective.=—­Reverting once more to the little girl of the picture, it will be conceded, upon careful consideration, that she is the center and focus of all the activities of mind and hand pertaining to agriculture.  Every furrow that is plowed is plowed for her; every tree that is planted is planted for her; every crop that is harvested is harvested for her; and every trainload of grain is moving toward her as its destination.  But for her, farm machinery would be silent, orchards would decay, trains would cease to move, and commerce would be no more.  She it is that causes the wheels to turn, the harvesters to go forth to the fields, the experiment stations to be equipped and operated, the markets to throb with activity, and the ships of commerce to ply the ocean.  For her the orchard, the granary, the dairy, and the loom give of their stores, and a million willing hands till, and toil, and spin.

=The story of bread.=—­But the bread and butter, the apple sauce, and the sugar!  They may not be omitted from the picture.  The bread transports us to the fields of waving grain and conjures up in our imagination visions of harvesters with their implements, wagons groaning beneath their golden loads, riches of grain pouring forth from machines, and brings to our nostrils the tang of the harvest time.  Into this slice of bread the sun has poured his wealth of sunshine all the summer long, and into it the kindly clouds have distilled their treasures.  In it we find the glory of the sunrise, the sparkling dewdrop, the song of the robin, the gentle mooing of the cows, the murmur of the brook, and the creaking of the mill wheel.  In it we read the poetry of the morning and of the evening, the prophecy of the noontide heat, and the mighty proclamations of Nature.  And it tells us charming stories of health, of rosy cheeks, of laughing eyes, of happiness, of love and service.

=Food and life.=—­The butter, the apple sauce, and the sugar each has a story of its own to tell that renders fiction weak by comparison.  If our hearts were but attuned to the charm and romance of the stories they have to tell, every breakfast-table would be redolent with the fragrance of thanksgiving.  If our hearts were responsive to the eloquence of these stories, then eating would become a ceremony and upon the farmer who provides our food would descend our choicest benedictions.  If the scales could but fall from our eyes that we might behold the visions which our food foretells, we could look down the vista of the years and see the children grown to manhood and womanhood, happy and busy in their work of enlarging and beautifying civilization.