"In my case, no," said Robin,--"but in dozens of other cases it works out differently. Besides, you've got to decide what education IS. The man who knows how to plough a field rightly is as usefully educated as the man who knows how to read a book, in my opinion." "Education," interposed a strong voice, "is first to learn one's place in the world and then know how to keep it!" All eyes turned towards the head of the table. It was Farmer Jocelyn who spoke, and he went on speaking: "What's called education nowadays," he said, "is a mere smattering and does no good. The children are taught, especially in small villages like ours, by men and women who often know less than the children themselves. What do you make of Danvers, for example, boys?" 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 finest crops of hay in the county?" A chorus of gruff voices answered him: "Ay, Mister Jocelyn!" "That's right!" "I never 'member more'n two wet seasons and then we got last load in 'tween showers," observed one man, thoughtfully. "There ain't never been nothin' wrong with Briar Farm hay crops anyway--all the buyers knows that for thirty mile round," said another. "And the wheat and the corn and the barley and the oats the same," struck in the old farmer again--"all the seed sown by hand and the harvest reaped by hand, and every man and boy in the village or near it has found work enough to keep him in his native place, spring, summer, autumn and winter, isn't that so?" "Ay, ay!" "Never a day out o' work!"