“Perhaps,” said Percy, “in some ways; but not in other ways.  We hear on every hand that this is an age of specialists, that the most successful man cannot take time to prepare himself well for many different lines of work; that he must make the best possible preparation in some one line for which he may have special talent or special interest; and then endeavor to go farther in that line than any one has gone before.  When I first wrote to the State University I asked how long a time would likely be required for me to complete all the subjects that are taught there, and the registrar replied that, if I could carry heavy work every year, I might hope to take all the courses now offered in about seventy years.  In considering this point of preparation for future work, it has seemed to me that if I leave the farm life and devote myself to law or to engineering, I must in large measure sacrifice about ten years of valuable experience in practical agriculture.  I have learned enough about farming so that I can manage almost as well as the neighbors; and without this knowledge, gathered, as you say, in the school of experience, I can see that serious mistakes would often be made.

“You know that Doctor Miller bought the Bronson farm two years ago.  Well, he has been giving some directions himself concerning its management.  He has had no experience in farming, and last year, after he had the new barn built, he directed his men to put the sheaf oats in the barn so they would be safe from the weather.  He did not understand that oats must stand in the shock for two or three weeks to become thoroughly “cured” before they can safely be even stacked out of doors; and the result was that his entire oat crop rotted in the barn.

“People who have lived always in the city sometimes express the most amusing opinions of farm conditions so well understood even by a ten-year-old country boy.  I recently overheard two traveling men remarking about the differences which they could plainly observe between the corn crops in different fields as they rode past in the train.

“‘Some fields have twice as good corn as other adjoining fields,’ one remarked.  ‘How do you account for the difference,’ asked the other. ‘oh, I suppose the one farmer was too stingy of his seed,’ was the reply.

“I am convinced that there are hundreds or perhaps thousands of valuable facts that have been acquired through experience and observation by the average farm boy of eighteen or twenty years that would be of little or no value to him in most other occupations; and in this respect I should be handicapped if I leave the farm life and begin wholly at the bottom in some other profession.  Perhaps agriculture is not a profession, but I think it should be if the highest success is to be attained.”

“I surely hope you will be successful, Percy, and your reasoning sounds all right; but other occupations seem to lead to greater wealth than farming.”