The professor sat down and thrust his hand through his hair. The president
invited discussion. For some few minutes no one rose; presently, after a
whispered conversation with his friend, an elderly farmer stood up from
the forms at the very back of the room. He made no pretence to rounded
periods, but spoke much better than might have been expected; he had a
small piece of paper in his hand, on which he had made notes as the
lecture proceeded.

He said that the lecturer had made out a very good case. He had proved to
demonstration, in the most logical manner, that farmers were fools. Well,
no doubt, all the world agreed with him, for everybody thought he could
teach the farmer. The chemist, the grocer, the baker, the banker, the wine
merchant, the lawyer, the doctor, the clerk, the mechanic, the merchant,
the editor, the printer, the stockbroker, the colliery owner, the
ironmaster, the clergyman, and the Methodist preacher, the very cabmen and
railway porters, policemen, and no doubt the crossing-sweepers--to use an
expressive Americanism, all the whole "jing-bang"--could teach the
ignorant jackass of a farmer.

Some few years ago he went into a draper's shop to bring home a parcel for
his wife, and happened to enter into conversation with the draper himself.
The draper said he was just going to sell off the business and go into
dairy farming, which was the most paying thing out. That was just when
there came over from America a patent machine for milking cows. The
draper's idea was to milk all his cows by one of these articles, and so
dispense with labour. He saw no more of him for a long time, but had heard
that morning that he went into a dairy farm, got rid of all his money, and
was now tramping the country as a pedlar with a pack at his back.
Everybody thought he could teach the farmer till he tried farming himself,
and then he found his mistake.

One remark of the lecturer, if he might venture to say so, seemed to him,
a poor ignorant farmer of sixty years' standing, not only uncalled-for and
priggish, but downright brutal. It was that the man with little capital
ought to be driven out of farming, and the sooner he went to the wall the
better. Now, how would all the grocers and other tradesmen whom he had
just enumerated like to be told that if they had not got 10,000_l_. each
they ought to go at once to the workhouse! That would be a fine remedy for
the depression of trade.

He always thought it was consi