TWELFTH DISTRICT AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 735 



OPENING ADDRESS. 



DELIVERED BY MRS. A. M. REED, TUESDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 11, 1887. 



Mr. President, Ladies, and Gentlemen: When the Father of all com- 

 pleted His grand work of creation, He placed man in a garden, in the situa- 

 tion that must have been the most blest, best, and natural one for humanity. 

 And that is why, I think, that around field and flower, in blossoming and 

 fruitage, in promise and perfection, there lingers yet something of Paradise, 

 and why among those who sow and reap, and follow the peaceful pursuits 

 of agriculture, we find the nearest approach to independence and content- 

 ment met with upon earth. From that first garden, where sprang spon- 

 taneous to the wants of man the fairest and best of earth's productions, 

 disobedience having banished our first parents, God gave his first sentence 

 for their guidance through the cruel path that must now lead up to their 

 redemption, and sent man forth to till the ground, from whence he was 

 taken, that henceforth would yield for him not only herb, and fruit, and 

 grain, but thorns and thistles also. The forbidden trees did, indeed, bear 

 bitter fruit for the descendants of Adam, and century after century have 

 they solved, in the sweat of their brows, problem after problem of labor, 

 finding out by patient toil some of God's first thoughts for our ease and 

 prosperity, that had been no mystery to man had not the gates of Eden 

 closed forever behind him. Working upward out of darkness, fulfilling 

 year after year, in tears of affliction and the sweat of toil, the plans of 

 which we know not yet the consummation, it is not strange then that in 

 the hearts of men there should linger yet a longing for the peace and 

 plenty of that lost Eden, nor that many of the best minds of every age 

 have turned to agricultural pursuits as the best means of securing domestic 

 peace and national prosperity. Thousands of instances give testimony to 

 the fact that the benefactors and philanthropists of almost every age and 

 time, not only chose such mode of life for themselves, but pointed to such 

 pursuits as the solving of many a vexed question, to hush dissensions and 

 heal the ravages of war. Lucius Quintius Cincinnatus, an honest man, 

 and just, and one of the best minds before the Christian era, cultivated a 

 farm of four acres on the banks of the Tiber. He was called from his 

 agricultural labors by a message from the Senate of Rome pronouncing him 

 Dictator. Wiping the sweat and dust of honest toil from his brow, he 

 donned his robe of state, and entered upon his new duties. In a very 

 short time, having adjusted wisely and well the troubles of his country- 

 men, he returned to his farm, preferring a position of peaceful independence 

 to the confusions of the affairs of government, even when he held the first 

 place in their administration. Cato, the Censor, in his younger days, applied 

 himself to agriculture. He wrote a book concerning country affairs, in 

 which he did not think it beneath his dignity to give rules and receipts for 

 the making of cakes and the preserving of fruits. Our own Washington, 

 after serving his country as soldier, and statesman, and Chief Executive, 

 gave up voluntarily the pursuits of ambition, and retired to his estate to 

 live a life of peaceful seclusion, the beauty and harmony of which have 

 not been excelled. Gladstone to-day offers, as the solving of one of the 



