ANNUAL ADDEESS. 265 



the printers' type. I read here the signs and proofs of true no- 

 bility ; for labor is noble — it is manly to work to earn the bread 

 that we eat, and the comfortable homes in which we live, and 

 the blothing we wear, and the sweet sleep which refreshes ns by 

 honest toil — by the sweat of the face, and the sweat of the brain. 

 And for six thousand years God has been confirming the truth 

 of this by an ordination of his, that the idler, the drone, the 

 sponge, shall not eat well, nor sleep well, nor feel well — in short, 

 that he who is too lazy to work, has no right to live! 



If, then, from my sympathies with the laboring man, and from 

 the little thought and reflection I have been able to bestow, I 

 may be able to draw something that shall add in some small de- 

 gree, to the interest and profit of this annual occasion, it is all I 

 can promise to do. It was the manifestation of friendly feeling 

 that brought me here, and I may trust that the same feeling will 

 kindly and charitably overlook all that is wanting or inappro- 

 priate in my remarks to-day. Do not think, however, from what 

 I have said, that I am going to preach you a sermon, or that I 

 am about to harangue you on the subject of politics — I shall do 

 neither. This is no place for party feeling or party excitement 

 to obtrude itself. On this holiday occasion we should remember 

 only that we are neighbors and fellow citizens, and devote the 

 time to the legitimate purposes for which we are assembled. 



Mr. President, and Fellow Citizens, we live in an age of thril- 

 ling events — an age of excitement, of discovery, of progress, of 

 reform ; an age in which is developed, and now are in process of 

 development, the results of long-operating causes. The thought 

 and labor of hundreds of years are concentrating in the move- 

 ments and changes of this noon of the nineteenth century. You 

 do not need to be told that nothing comes to maturity at once, 

 but only by a progressive development. The grain which we 

 commit to the bosom of the earth, is not by one great effort of 

 vegetative power, immediately returned to us in waving fields 

 of yellow corn. Through the quickening power of the soil, and 

 under the influence of sun, and rain, and dew, there must first 

 be germination, then growth, or simple organization, then bud 

 and flower, and then matured fruit, ere we can thrust in the 

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