“Will you take the rear seat?” she asked. as they reached the carriage.

“If you so prefer.”

“That seat is for our guests, so I don’t prefer,” came her reply, which left Percy wholly in the dark as to her wishes.

“Then let me be your coachman rather than your guest.”

“If you so prefer,” she repeated, and without waiting for assistance quickly mounted to the front seat, leaving him to occupy the driver’s seat beside her.

“Captain and Mrs. Stone of Montplain were with us for Thanksgiving and I came with the carriage to take them home.  Professor Barstow has also been spending his Thanksgiving vacation visiting with papa.”

“Thank you,” said Percy, as he took the lines and turned the horses toward Westover.

“You are certainly welcome to drive this team if you enjoy it.”

“I thank you for that also,” said Percy.  Adelaide noted the word also, but she only remarked that she hoped he had enjoyed his travels, though she could not understand what pleasure he could find in visiting old worn-out farms.

“Of all things,” she continued, “it seems to me that farming is the last that anyone would want to undertake.”

“It is both the first and the last,” said Percy.  “As you know, when our ancestors came to America, agriculture was the first great industry they were able to develop.  Other industries and professions follow agriculture and must be supported in large measure by the agricultural industry.  Merchants, lawyers, doctors and teachers are in a sense agricultural parasites.”

An hour before he would not have included teachers in this class; for, next to the mother in the home, he felt that the teacher in the school is the greatest necessity for the highest development of the agricultural classes.

“Without agriculture,” he continued, “America could never have been developed, and, unless the prosperity of American agriculture can be maintained, poverty is the only future for this great nation.  The soil is the greatest source of wealth, and it is the most permanent form of wealth.  The Secretary of Agriculture at Washington told me a few days ago that eighty-six per cent. of the raw materials used in all our manufacturing industry are produced from the soil.

“Yes, agriculture is certainly the first industry in this country; and I am fully convinced that to restore the fertility of the depleted soils of the East and South, and even to maintain the productive power of the great agricultural regions of the West, deserves and will require the best thought of the most influential people of America.