A roar of laughter went round the table.

"Danvers!" exclaimed a huge red-faced fellow at the other end of
the board,--"Why he talks yer 'ead off about what he's picked up
here and there like, and when I asked him to tell me where my son
is as went to Mexico, blowed if he didn't say it was a town
somewheres near New York!"

Another roar went round the table. Farmer Jocelyn smiled and held
up his hand to enjoin silence.

"Mr. Danvers is a teacher selected by the Government," he then
observed, with mock gravity. "And if he teaches us that Mexico is
a town near New York, we poor ignorant farm-folk are bound to
believe him!"

They all laughed again, and he continued:

"I'm old enough, boys, to have seen many changes, and I tell you,
all things considered, that the worst change is the education
business, so far as the strength and the health of the country
goes. That, and machine work. When I was a youngster, nearly every
field-hand knew how to mow,--now we've trouble enough to find an
extra man who can use a scythe. And you may put a machine on the
grass as much as you like, you'll never get the quality that
you'll get with a well-curved blade and a man's arm and hand
wielding it. Longer work maybe, and risk of rain--but, taking the
odds for and against, men are better than machines. Forty years
we've scythed the grass on Briar Farm, and haven't we had the