128 AGRICUI^TURE OF MAINE. 



quarter part the amount they should, but the farmers of Maine 

 are waking up. The men who are awake are scattered all 

 over the State and their influence is gradually leavening the 

 whole lump ; and I think the young men, especially, are becom- 

 ing alive to the opportunity that the State offers. 



Hon. Charles Strout. 



I have not even the claim to recognition as a farmer that Dr. 

 Smith has given. He is one of our most expert men in his line 

 of business here and we all look to him with a great deal of 

 confidence in the most difficult cases ; and yet he has told you 

 to-night, not in so many words but inferentially, that he is one 

 of the best, the noblest martyrs to farming we ever met. We 

 have Socrates, who was a martyr to the ideal. Napoleon, who 

 was a maytyr to the warrior spirit, and Lincoln, who was a mar- 

 tyr to duty and to mankind. But the Doctor stands among them 

 all as a martyr to farming. He may not go down to history as 

 those illustrious personages have, but he tells us frankly here 

 that he works all day and collects those expert fees which are 

 well earned and then he takes them out to his farm in Sebago 

 and puts them into his farm and leaves them all there ; and 

 when he comes to study up the net profit he has to come back 

 here and go to work again. 



I think it must be admitted by all of us that meetings like this 

 are productive of good. The future is to be made for us by 

 devoted men who can stand up and express their ideas and 

 fight for those ideas against obstacles. A snow ball grows by 

 rolling and it is by the work of these men who arc earnest and 

 steadfast and devoted that development comes in dairy farm- 

 ing and in general farming; so that even from this small meet- 

 ing you can look for satisfactory fruit, and future developments, 

 I am no prophet, but we will say in ten years from now, or 

 sooner, I hope this meeting will be repeated in this hall, with 

 a hall filled with enthusiastic dairymen who will come here 

 to learn something from their fellows and to forward their life 

 work. In that way we shall develop the State of Maine and 

 the city of Portland, 'and make us a better commonwealth, and 



