Addresses — Local Societies. 263 



as possible, from task or burden of every kind. The host is a per- 

 sonage and power whose influence we would propitiate from motives 

 as well of policy as of pleasure. 



The society now not only exhibits no signs of weariness, no 

 marks of work-worn woefulness, but obviously stands up before 

 the people of the country in far greater freshness, vigor and ef- 

 ficiency than ever before. Indeed, the last meeting, held only two 

 weeks ago at the house of a member who is here present, is unani- 

 mously pronounced to have been one of the most interesting which 

 has occured in its whole five years of life. Mr. J. M. Smith, our 

 president, and yours too, the Hon. W. J. Abrams, who read an able 

 essay on that occasion, and Mr. H. K. Cowles, the large and success- 

 ful farmer at whose house the meeting was held, all of whom are 

 here present, the two last named as delegates, can verify all I have 

 stated of the past and the present of the society. 



Thus much in proof and exposition of one fact expressed and one 

 implied in the trite apothegm placed at the head of this article. I 

 have shown in reference to the Brown County Agricultural and Horti- 

 cultural Society, that " all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." 

 I have not shown nor attempted to show, for I had no occasion to 

 do so, that "all play and no work makes him a mere toy," but I 

 have further shown that a due alternation of " work " and " play " — 

 the latter of which terms, so far at least, as my present purpose is 

 concerned, is just equivalent to rest — is highly important and prob- 

 ably essential to the complete success, not only of said society 

 and kindred institutions, but of every enterprise of magnitude 

 undertaken by human hands. 



And this leads me to the second branch of the subject, the phi- 

 losophy embodied in the quotation just referred to; upon which 

 only a few words. Defining " play" in its relation to " work," to 

 be just equivalent to " rest," a definition which is as manifestly a 

 physical truth as work is a physical fact, I reassert that a funda- 

 mental doctrine of philosophy is taught in my text; a doctrine 

 founded in the very structure and constitution of the human body 

 and soul, a doctrine which is, indeed, but the utterance of a uni- 

 versal law impressed by the creative fiat upon all living things. 

 Nothing that breathes, nothing that lives without breathing, can 

 continuously, for any relatively long period of time, perform those 

 functions which we are accustomed to designate, though perhaps 



