Statk Agricultural Society. 95 



Californian. In letters, we liave Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose "Scar- 

 let Letter" will never be erased; Washington Irving, whose tales of 

 travel show a wealth of fancy that makes his sketches read like 

 I'onumces; Oliver Wendell lluhnes, the laughing philosopher, the 

 Silenus of the nineteenth century; Henry W. J.ongfellow and the 

 late William Cullcn l>ryant, the sweet singers of the country; Art- 

 emus Ward and Mark Twain, humorists — the one gentle as Tom 

 Hood, the other as wildly grotes(iue as (iilbert-a-Beckett. On the 

 stage, we have Edwin Forrest, who established the American school 

 of tragedy; John ]\Ic("ullougli, the dearest ])U\n\ of his master; 

 Lester ^\'allack, the model of light comedy; John E. Owens, the 

 skilled exponent of low comedy; Charlotte Cushman, a very queen 

 of tragedy. As orators, Daniel Webster, Demosthenic in voice and 

 etieet: Henry Clay, pure as the rippling waters of his eloquence; 

 John C. Calhoun, \yhose name is synonymous with oratory; Henry 

 Ward Bcecher and Colonel ]job higersoll, who blow hot and cold, 

 each with unctious enthusiasm. In invention, we have P^dward 

 Morse-, til e father of the telegra])h; Jildison, who has accomplished 

 that with electricity which would liave bound him to the stake three 

 hundred years ago; Howe and Singer, who have transmuted the dull 

 metal of labor into the gold of j)leasure. As heroes, we have Ulysses 

 S.Grant, another Ctesar without Caesar's pride; rash Ellsworth, of 

 Alexandria; Stonewall Jackson, bravest when hard pressed ; Captain 

 Hall, who sought to advance his country's honor over the ice fields 

 of the North; and Henry M. Stanley, who suri)assed the feats of Liv- 

 ingston over the burning plains of Africa, and cried to the newly 

 discovered waters in an American's voice, and looked into the face of 

 kings who had dreamed the world circled around them. But there 

 is no need to spread out a lengthier roll.* You will yourselves call to 

 mind hundreds of prominent leading names that belong to men and 

 Avomen the peers of any in any country. In the arts of peace and 

 war, in science and literature, in mechanical invention and political 

 economy, the American is continually pushing ahead. 



Let me particularly call your attention to the advances that have 

 been made in the j^ractical pursuit of agriculture in this generation. 

 Inxiigine the feelings of any of our great-grandfathers set down, say 

 in the Sacramento A'alley. He had gone to sleep when it took 

 little less than a month to garner the harvest, and the grass that had 

 been cut on his grave was mown by a sickle the shape of the new 

 moon. Steam, as a motive power in the field, was not dreamed of. 

 In ])lace of the tugging team of oxen, i)lodding across the newly- 

 broken ground, furrowing the earth's face as slowly as time furrows 

 ours, he sees the work done by an untiring though panting machine, 

 the goad turned into a coal box, the yoke into bands and imllies, and 

 the low of the " i)atient ox " into the shrill whistle of the engine. I 

 know this is rather typical than real, but the i)rinciple of advance- 

 ment is correct, though this particular instance may lack applical>il- 

 ity. Let us, then, take a moi-e i)ertinent example. \\'hen our grand- 

 fathers were boys and our great-grandfathers were men, the harvest 

 season came in and went out something like this. You must recol- 

 lect, of course, that Califoi'iiia was not thought of, and that not even 

 the most prescient of seers saw such a body as the State Agricultural 

 Society of Calilbrnia an embryo in the womb of time. As virgin 

 July waned and leonine August drew near, the yellow fields were 

 scanned, and when the ears were heavy and the grain full and dry, 



