State Agricultural Society. 115 



awful inllucnces by which weak men were coiistanily seduced from 

 virtue, and the worthy and independent as constantly oppressed. 

 The conductor tapped nie ui)on the shoulder, giving me no attention, 

 and my ticket only enough to punch it. My freind, in answer to the 

 call upon him, took from his note-book a handsome, highly colored 

 card, decidedly gilt-edged. The conductor did not press it to his 

 forehead and breast, as the lOastern subordinate miglit have done, 

 but he did treat its bearer with j^rofound and exceptional respect. 

 His name, and apparently' the number on the card, was taken and 

 noted. He was not himself the rose, but he had been in the same 

 garden. In short, my friend was himself, under a free pass, illustra- 

 ting his own theories. Considering his real merits, his general char- 

 acter, his talents, I looked at him in amused astonishment, and 

 mumbled over to myself: 



Everything Iiatli he 



Tlial nature or that art deemeth manly 



Save an honest heart. 



And yet wliy should we judge him thus harshly? Instead of the 

 insincere, tricky fellow who condescends to all things promising suc- 

 cess, let us rather hope that the love of an old home and the gray old 

 parents there, some of those old affections which, thank God, never 

 quite die out with us, imjielled him home, and the want of present 

 means to alibrd the expense had seemed to himself at least to justify 

 an act from which at another time he would have shrunk. M\' feel- 

 ing of aversion to the railroad, however, returned, and must always 

 remain until two questions are solved — first, what were the true 

 motives which operated upon the gentleman to induce him to receive 

 a free pass; and second — a purely arithmetical query — how much of 

 my one hundred and thirty dollars went to reimburse the railroad 

 for the expense of carrying this gentleman for nothing? 



Go into the valley of the great lakes, to the headwaters of the 

 Mississippi, and in the mounds and tumuli there, judge of the popu- 

 lations which must at some remote period have dwelt there. Go to 

 Central America and Mexico, and view the works of the earlier races; 

 to Egypt and Assyria, where forty centuries look down upon struc- 

 tures the extent and grandeur of which arc l)oyond the imagination, 

 upon a single one of which two liundred thousand men were em- 

 ployed. Look at all the memorials of Grecian and lioman greatness ! 

 What vastness of wealth must have been employed, at what cheap 

 price must life and human labor have been held, what a magnificent 

 spectacle of human energy and skill in all the inventive and mechan- 

 ical arts, and what a vast aggregate of patient and laborious endeavor 

 is exhibited! 



Elemental forces have prostrated the great works of antiquity, the 

 gnawing tooth of Time has eaten the granite columns. The gods 

 look down no longer uj)on worshipers, but ujion desolation. Their 

 memories live only in their symbols. But these peoj^les of the olden 

 time laid the foundations of our arts, civilization, and beliefs. Cae- 

 sar's famous Tenth Legion no more truly marched over the via 

 Romanorum than does modern civilization over the intellectual 

 jaths opened to it by the thought and labor of dead centuries. 80 

 et this process of improvement continue through us. Let us at 

 cast hope that the little jealousies and hatreds that agitate us will 

 die with us. Fifty or a hundred years hence let us hope that the 



