310 PISCATAQUIS CENTRAL SOCIETY. 



safe to be trusted, and bighly worthy to be industriously and intel- 

 ligently pursued. In furtherance of these interests by an intelligent 

 application of labor thereto, you are united in an associational ca- 

 pacity ; and in societary relations you seek to stimulate enterprise 

 in the development of your resources, and, by laudable emulation, 

 to enhance the common fund of knowledge. 



Experience shows that all great interests, while fostered by indi- 

 vidual enterprise, and often in the privacy of retirement, are best 

 represented to the world by means "of associated effort, and by a free 

 interchange of individual views, contributing the results of isolated 

 labor and experience to the general stock of intelligence. 



It is not strange that, while all other interests have found so use- 

 ful auxiliaries in social combinations and societary arrangements, 

 and seek expression and efficiency in clubs, meetings and assemblies, 

 this staple interest of the world should endeavor to profit by agencies 

 of so well established utility. 



Gentlemen, I am present, by invitation, to address you upon the 

 great interest of labor, and especially that department of labor with 

 which you are more intimately connected. You may demand to 

 know by what service I have earned my title to expound a subject 

 of this magnitude, and wherein to discriminate between my profes- 

 sions in its behalf and those of the demngogue to whom I adverted 

 in the outset, I claim no peculiar qualifications for this task, and 

 I confess it is with extreme diffidence that I have consented to 

 address you upon a subject to which some one of your own pro- 

 fession (for your pursuit is eminently entitled to the distinction 

 of a profession) is far more adequate to do justice. But I repre- 

 sent a working profession, and have known from my youth up 

 what the word labor means ; and though my habits of life, profes- 

 sional interests, associations in society, and ordinary standards of 

 comparison, may have slightly differed from your own ; yet I confess 

 to an interest, constantly increasing, in yours as a specific pursuit. 

 And having for years, in my pastoral intercourse, and in my travels 

 in almost every section of the state, been on terms of intimate social 

 relationship with farmers, and the recipient of their bounteous hos- 

 pitality and social cheer, I feel at home in their presence, and I 

 invite you to come into "a warm, good natured, country kitchen 

 fireside relation" with me, and permi't me to speak my mind freely 



