898 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



there was light." Ar<3 you sure you will not find among the 

 strangers you meet there, the trace of numerous and fatal dis- 

 eases ? Will you not burn with fever and shudder with ague ? 

 Is it a pleasant thing to pass through the purgatory of acclima- 

 tion ? Do you believe that the ease with which you acquire the 

 means of abundant living will be favorable to industry, vigorous 

 effort, and variety of thouglit and acquisition ? Is it not the 

 law of your human nature, that ease and leisure beget indo- 

 lence and lead us into temptation ? Is not effort, continual 

 effort, tlie tenure by which you hold your health ? And is not 

 that, with your habits, education, and mode of life, your best 

 safeguard against temptation ? Is it not necessary to the de- 

 velopment of the full man which you hope in the best years of 

 life to become ? You speak of the facilities of travel, and the 

 means of returning frequently to revisit the scenes of your 

 nativity. Are you sure there will be more of pleasure than 

 melancholy and disappointment, when you find the old scenes 

 changed, and the companions of your youth no longer here ? 



Besides, please to look one moment at your own native Com- 

 monwealth. Hard in soil, severe in climate, limited in extent, 

 but still rich, oh, how rich, in the elastic energies of her people! 

 Look to the means of education, so continually improving ; to 

 the diffusion of i^eneral intelligence, to the influences which 

 will surround your children ; to the increase of moral and re- 

 ligious culture ; to the great fact that nowhere does the smallest 

 village spring into existence, but first rise the church and the 

 school-house ; to the municipal division into towns of convenient 

 area ; to the entire freedom of opinion and independence and 

 individuality of thought and action. Consider that if the great 

 ills of humanity fall upon you or yours ; blindness, insanity, 

 deprivation of the faculties of hearing and speech, you find the 

 best alleviatives and remedies which the best science and the 

 most advanced civilization can afford ? That to the blind, the 

 Bible is no longer sealed ; tlmt gentle treatment and benign 

 ministries bring back the wandering reason to its home of reno- 

 vated health ; that a new language opens the intellect of the 

 deaf and dumb to instruction and communication. Consider 

 the evidences of a liberal public spirit, which your own unaided, 

 self-reliant Commonwealth has exhibited and is now exhibiting, 

 in aiding individual and combined enterprise, in conquering 



