262 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



ing their shadows before have already come. In our own country 

 events which, in the wildest moments of our imaginations, we never 

 dreamed of living to behold, have transpired, and others, the out- 

 growth of these, are pressing upon us. Caste is being destroyed, 

 and all is calling to a higher life and a purer civilization. And what 

 is now demanded is the more general diffusion of intellectual, 

 scientific and practical knowledge, and thereby the more just and 

 equal distribution of the blessings and privileges resulting there- 

 from. The world demands this and is earnestly pressing after it, 

 and the contracted souls who have served themselves, and that con- 

 tinually, and will continue to do so, must stand aside or be run 

 over, for revolutions n^ver go backward. 



If, then, filling our place in the world to the best of our ability 

 constitutes success, it becomes our dut}'- to inquire how that suc- 

 cess may best be reached. But first let me ask, if this be a fact, 

 ought it not to go a great way in reconciling our young men and 

 women to the State of Maine, that State which we are so justly 

 proud to call our mother ? Hard and rocky though many of her 

 fields may be and only yield their returns to the iron nerve and in- 

 domitable will of the skillful farmer, and though long may be her 

 winters and short her summers, though we lack the rich bottom 

 lands of the Mississippi, and the broad prairies of Minnesota and 

 Nebraska, and cannot even comfort ourselves with the rattlesnakes 

 of Kansas or the fever and ague of Ohio, yet here our fathers and 

 mothcrsbraved successfully the mighty forests, the rushing streams, 

 the wild beasts and savage men. In place of the forest they gave 

 us the fruitful field, and where once arose the smoke of the red 

 man's wigwam, now is seen the cottage of the farmer and mechan- 

 ic, the abode of domestic enjoyment and civilization. Here cluster 

 our first recollections and associations ; around us are our friends, 

 our society is as good and our privileges perhaps as great as any 

 to be found in the world. In every village a church spire points 

 heavenward, and in almost every valley is to be found that temple 

 of liberty and nursery of free institutions, the common school 

 house, and beneath the green sods of lier quiet valleys our fathers 

 sleep. When 1 look abroad over tliis beautiful landscape, with its 

 clear streams, its silver lakes and glassy ponds, in their settings of 

 emerald, sliaded by the mellow tints and gorgeous hues of autumn, 

 its valleys teeming with grains and fruits, its green hill-sides dot- 

 ted with theilocks and herds of the thriving and industrious far- 

 mer, the rushing cataracts destined to turn spindles in untold thou- 



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