Knowing Too Much

I find no man so disagreeablo to mect with, as one wbo kuows everytlung. Oí course we expect it in nowppapor editors, and allow for it. Uut to meet a man engaged in innocent occuputions - over your ience, wlio 13 armed eap-a-pie ngaiii8t all new ideas - vvho ''knew it atore," or ' has heerd so," or doubts it, or replies to your most trnthful sally, "taiu't so, nuther," s aggravating íq the extreme. There is many a sraall farmer, scattcred up aud down in New Eugland, whose chief diffieulty is - he kuows too much. I do not thiuk a single charge against him could cover more ground, or cover it better. It is hard to make intollipible to a third party his apparent inaccessibility to new ideas, his satisfied quietude, his invinoible inerthim, his stcl id and yet shrewd capacity to resist novelties, his selfassurance, his sjrutinizing contempt for outsidoness of whatever sort - his supreme aud iueradicable faith rn kis ovvn pecuüur doctrine, whether of politics, religión, ethnology, íiam-curing, matiuriüg, or íarmiug geu erallj. It is -nol afone that men of this class cling by a particular method of culture, beoause t'ieir neighborhood has followed the íame fov yeara, and tho results are fair; but it is their pure contempt for being taught; their undervuluation of wbat they do not know, as not worth kuowing ; their conviotion that their schooliug their faith, their principies, and their underetanding aro among God's best works ; and that other people's schooling, faith, principies, and view of truth - whether human or divine - are inferior and uniniportant. Yet, withal, tliere 3 a shrewdness about thetn which forces upon you the conviction that they do not so mach dislike to be taught, as dislike to scem to be taught. Thoy like to impresa you with the notion that what you may teil thjm is only a ncw statement of what they know already. It is ineonceivable that anything really worth knowing has not come within the range of their opportunities ; or if not theirs, then of their accredited teachers, tho town school uiaster, the parson, the doctor, or tho newspaper, In short, all that thoy do not know which may be wortli knowing, is known in their town, and they are in ome sort partners to it. Talk to a smal! farmer of this class about Mechi, or Lawes, or the new thejry l Liebig, and he gives a complaeont, inexorable grin - as much as to say - "Onn't come tliat stutï over me, I'm too oíd a bird."