THE COUNTRY BOY'S CREED.

I belie

believe that the Country which God made is more beautiful than the City which man made; that life outof doors and in touch with the earth is the natural life of man. I believe that work is work wherever we find it, but that work with Nature is more inspir ing than work with the most intricate machinery. I believe that the dignityof labor depends not on what you do, but on how you do it: that opportunity comes to a boy on the farm asoften as to a boy in the city, that life is larger and freer and happier on the farm than in the town, that mysuccess depends not upon my location, but upon myself-not upon my dreams, but upon what I actually do, not upon luck, but upon pluck. I be lieve in working when you work and in playing when you play and in giving and demanding a square deal in every act of life. ~✿

THREE FARMERS WHO HELPED TO MAKE

HISTORY
I

George Washington

The name "George Washington" usually recalls to our imagination the indomitable hero of the American Revolution, or the grave and reverend first president of the United States; but the real George Washington was a farmer a simple country gentleman.

Washington led the tattered colonial troops through the fire of seven years of revolution, and steered the Ship of State for the first eight years of its perilous voyage. These were incidents in a life that was devoted to the ancient and honorable calling of tilling the soil. And although we usually think of Washington in the full regalia of his office, as artists are wont to paint him, he was, nevertheless, more often seen in real life in "plain drab clothes and broad-brimmed white hat," with a hickory switch in his hand riding alone through his Virginia plantation.

This plantation, vast beyond our dreams of private holdings, stretched along the valley of the peaceful Potomac river, and supported and gave occupation to four hundred people.

It is said that the Mount Vernon estate was a little town in itself. On it was a blacksmith shop, where the smith and his assistants did not only the work required

for the plantation, but any work that came to them from the outside. A wood burner was also employed to keep the mansion house and the smithy supplied with charcoal. Carpenters and masons and brickmakers there were, enough to do the work of the estate, and also to put in much time in work in Alexandria and the "Federal City," as Washington was then called. Gardeners were kept busy planting thousands of fruit trees, grapevines, and hedge plants as well as vegetables for the kitchen. On this model plantation there was also a water mill where not only meal but flour of a far-famed quality was ground. The barrels for the Mount Vernon flour were made on the plantation. The estate had its own shoemaker and its own staff of weavers. Along the river front were private fisheries which not only supplied all the fresh fish needed on the plantation, but which also yielded enough to sell.

Washington was also a breeder of fine stock. On the Mount Vernon estate were to be found English sheep, excellent hogs, and Arabian horses. The Mount Vernon mules were famous. It is said that some of them were sold at double the price of a good work horse.

Washington was a remarkably successful farmer. At his death he owned an estate worth over a half million dollars. One of his biographers says, "It is to be questioned if a fortune was ever more honestly acquired or more thoroughly deserved."

A visitor to Mount Vernon during the lifetime of Washington wrote of him, "His greatest pride is to be thought the first farmer in America. He is quite a Cincinnatus."

II

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson, like Washington, was primarily a farmer. Incidentally he was a lawyer, an author of note, and a writer of state papers, among which was the Declaration of Independence. He was Secretary of State, President of the United States for two terms, and an inspirer and patron of public education. His plantation home at Monticello, which you see in the frontispiece, was, like Mount Vernon, surrounded by broad holdings of Virginia fields and forests. On this estate, also, were artisans of all descriptions.

Jefferson believed in purebred stock, and imported fine sheep and hogs from Europe. To him we owe

the introduction into this

country of the Merino sheep. Jefferson believed in the rotation of crops, and had a system which he had worked out for himself.

The "Sage of Monticello," however, was not as successful a farmer as Washington. So many of the years of his eventful life were given to public service that his estates suffered.

However, at his death, he left a comfortable estate,