348 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



The future of agriculture, g-entlemen, is a subject which should 

 stir all our minds to their profoundest depths whenever we meet 

 for consultation, as we have here this eveniug. I am glad to speak 

 for one moment, because I always love to be in an assembly like 

 this. I am just from my farm, from practical and very personal 

 labor. I come from gathering corn and potatoes, and fighting the 

 flood that we have had up among the Green Mountains, to keep it 

 from carrying away the river banks ; and I am glad to get down 

 here once more among the farmers of Maine. I feel a good deal 

 as old Anteas is reported to have felt when he got his feet on 

 mother earth, a renewal of his strength. I was at Augusta two 

 or three days last winter, with several gentlemen whom I recognize 

 here this evening, and I got a great deal of strength there. I have 

 felt better for it, and have accomplished more the past year. I 

 have felt myself more of a man, and I have tried to make others 

 about me, engaged in the same occupation, feel moi-e like men ; 

 and for that reason I am glad to say a few words here to-night. 



I confess that I myself, as well as others in the same business, 

 am very apt to receive suggestions such as has been thrown out 

 here this evening for our benefit, with some incredulity. We are 

 proverbially too critical, too skeptical, too apt to halt whenever 

 suggestions are thrown out to us in reference to what we can 

 accomplish as agriculturists, by way of relieving our muscles 

 from labor and gaining more time for the cultivation of the mind, 

 and bringing ourselves up to such a standard as we have had set 

 before us. Men who see further into the future by reason of the 

 light which science gives them than most of us can, come to us 

 occasionally in a friendly manner and patiently point out to us the 

 course we should pursue in order to attain the desired object, and 

 we, in a doubting, hesitating manner, wait, and question, and 

 doubt, and suggest, and fear, and too often sit down just where 

 we were. But in order to make progress we must, whether we 

 believe it or not, take hold of such principles as have been sug- 

 gested to us to-night, and apply them to the actualities of our 

 business before we can succeed. Unless we do this we go, as has 

 been said, directly in the face of the plans of the Almighty. We 

 must put ourselves in harmony with the laws and operations of 

 nature in order to advance one single inch in tliis department of 

 labor, just as men who labor in other departments must bring 

 themselves into harmony with the laws of nature, or the laws of 

 mechanics, or the laws of trade, in order to advance an inch. 



