20 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



of the festival. The educative ofFect of j'our annual meetings is the 

 paramount motive. To one who has seen nothing better, a ragged don- 

 key is tl)e finest of quadrupeds, a goose the fairest of tlie feathered ti'ibes. 

 An hour's inspection of the best specimens in ever}- kind, in the animal 

 kingdom, in the wide domain of culture, and in the realm of art, will 

 mature the judgment and refine the taste more than whole years of 

 mere verbal descri])tion. This is one way in which the State educates 

 her people; and the people should not fail to honor the occasion by 

 their presence. The ruler and the subject, the teacher and the scholar, 

 the pastor and his parishioner, the fi\ther and his sons, the mother and 

 the fair ''olive plants round al)out her table," all should come to the 

 State's great normal school. Here is the potent osmotic force which 

 interpenetrates thought with thought, till the experience and discoveries 

 which were the property of the few, become the common possession of 

 the many. 



If any complain that the fair is unfairly managed, and are ready to 

 see it fall into disuse for no other reason than that it furnishes a meetinor 

 ground for jockey clubs and a reputable opportunity for the debatable 

 practice of horse racing, we answer the complaint in two sentences. 

 First, it is not criminal in horses to possess bone and tendon, wind and 

 power, nor in men to breed and own them. Second, the faultfinders 

 have nothing to do in order to correct the irregularities of which they 

 complain, but purchase memberships, outvote the jDerversionists, and 

 conduct the institution upon better principles. 



Finally, gentlemen, speed the ])loiigli tliat the mill may not cease its 

 turning. It is an evil augury when "the sound of the grinding is low." 

 How Israel must have prospered when the venerated Elisha steadied the 

 plough with ungloved hands behind his tremendous ox team! "The pen 

 is mightier than the sword," they say. (Just now, in parenthesis, some 

 people fancy that the swords of Grant and Sherman are quite as effica- 

 cious as the pens of Greeley and Sumner.) But the plough, the reaper, 

 the thresher, and the grist mill, are, in some good sense, mightier than 

 the pen and sword together. When the plough stops, the strong nation 

 will perish, whether its sword be bright as sunlight, or red as wrath. 



At no future period of Avar or peace can we depend so much as here- 

 tofore upon the virgin fertility of our vast domain. Every decade pur- 

 loins the '■ cream " from man}- an available rood. Henceforth the science 

 of fertilization must head our list of practical sciences. The earth will 

 grow old if we fail to renew it. "That Avhich is altogether just shalt 

 thou do," is God's law of equivalence, written upon every unshorn 

 meadow and everj- billow}^ wheat field. Render a just equivalent, and 

 the fields will never defraud you. It is the most irodlike of human 

 achievements to command health and life, and beauty and fragrance, 

 from corruption and decay. 



The elements will not be agitated forever. The rotten f\xbric of the 

 Confederacy, terribly racked and shaken by the recent bomliardment 

 from Pennsylvania, and Indiana, and Ohio, will tumble into shapeless 

 ruins when all the free States of the North strip for action in the 

 ajqjroaching Presidential election, and train their ballot boxes U])on it. 

 Soon we shall have seven hundred thousand swords to beat into ]>lough- 

 shai-es, and as many bayonets for pruning hooks, with the whole wide, 

 free laiul as a fit tlieatre for the mighty achievements of free labor. 



It would not be possible to stand in this place, and not remember that 

 j'our last annual address was delivered by one upon whose grave the 

 tears of thousands are now falling. It will make us better to remem- 



