IOC STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



ciice will have its effect beyond the precincts of home, so long as its members 

 depend upon it for shelter and retire to its scenes daily from the perplexities 

 of the busy life around them. If here they meet intelligence and sympathy in 

 Avhat interest and concern them; if here they are incited to the commendable 

 ambition which is necessary to the successful and merited acquirements of a 

 true character, they will go out with courage in their hearts, which courage 

 can be imparted to those with whom they come in contact; they in their tura 

 exert each one his separate intluence, and the great whole can be easily antici- 

 pated. It is by the strength of domestic alfection that the frame-work of 

 society is upheld and preserved. 



Holland says it is through the medium of homes that the social life-blood of 

 America is kept in circulation, and through this medium almost exclusively. 

 Then how necessary that they should be controlled by those influences which 

 are the natural offspring of a high and harmonious home life. 



Neighborhoods and communities should mean something more than a certain 

 number of houses, a certain number of inhabitants governed by the same laws 

 and containing equal civil burdens. They should be informed with that social, 

 genial life in which the influence of each nature, the power of each intellect, 

 the force of every well directed will, and the inspiration of every high and 

 pure character should be felt by all. 



History teaches us that from the beginning of time, every nation has con- 

 sisted of families; then is it not true that the hope of a nation rests on these 

 homes, humble as they may be? Especially is this true of our Republic, where 

 the intelligence and virtue of every citizen has a heightened relative value. 

 Since its welfare is involved in its people, the character and habits of every 

 member of its great family are important. Its safety may be interwoven with 

 the destiny of those whose birth-place is in obscurity. In the homes of our 

 country are the children, and from them go out into life men and women, and 

 only as those homes are what they should be, will they be what they should 

 be. Without virtue no commonwealth can exist. The nursery of this virtue 

 is the family and if it does not take root and grow there it is in vain we look 

 for it in riper years. Some of us may think, what share have we in the destiny 

 of our country? How can we, in our homes, have influence there? Perhaps 

 this illustration will convey the power of moral influence better than we can 

 otherwise do it: Among the Alleghanies there is a small spring, — a rivulet 

 stealing its unobtrusive way among the hills, until it spreads out into the beau- 

 tiful Ohio. Thence it stretches away a thousand miles, having on its banks 

 many villages and cities, many thousand cultivated farms and bearing on its 

 bosom more than half a thousand steamboats. Thence joining the Missis- 

 sippi, it stretches away some twelve hundred miles more, till it falls into the 

 ocean, one of its great tributaries. So with influence, it is a rill, a rivulet, 

 an ocean, boundless and fathomless as eternity. Perhaps we may have the 

 same share the rill has in the river, the river in the sea? Should every little 

 shaded streamlet tarry at its fountain head where would be the river that dis- 

 penses fertilit\% where the ocean, bearing commerce and wealth upon its never 

 resting tide? If these homes all through our land were to embrace right views 

 of their station, their responsibilities and their influences, and faithfully to act 

 in carrying those views into practice, what earthly agency could do such wide- 

 spread, such lasting good to the interests and to the institutions of the Amer- 

 ican people? What would wield so deep, so permanent, so universal an influ- 

 ence as they? for they lead into the very depths, the secret places, the hidden 

 springs of human interests and human happiness. 



