060 ANNUAL. REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



fiesh courage in life's tempestuous battle and starting anew, they 

 may become our best friends and aids in the advancement all along 

 the line of rural sociability. 



It has been said that "Experience keeps a dear school.-' But its 

 graduates never forget the lessons taught. Therefore, we should 

 all be very careful in our daily walk and conversation that we do 

 not injure the feelings of anj^one, but that we strew, as it were, 

 roses all along the pathway of life, thus leaving a sweet savor long 

 after w'e have passed away or into some other district, and the 

 influence which we have exerted ma^^ find adherents and be kept 

 going onward and upward to the advancement and betterment of hu- 

 manity. Civilization makes mankind more and more dependent upon 

 his fellow-man. Primitive man was seemingly a little world within 

 himself. He was his own mechanic, weaver, miller, baker, manu- 

 facturer, etc. He did not depend upon different manufacturing estab- 

 lishments for his many needed articles of clothing or implements. 

 Civilization divides this labor and thereby causes man to needs 

 be of a more sociable nature. The young man who desires or wishes 

 to become something in life must have stud}^, and with that study 

 a chance to develop his talent of thought, and thereby become ready 

 and able to express his opinion when necessity calls him, either in 

 public or private company. It has been truthfully said that each 

 ■djay that passes is the conflux of two eternities, for it is made of 

 currents that issue from the remote past and cause a flow onward 

 into the remote future. This being true, who can measure the im- 

 portance of a year as a factor in the sum of human destiny. Only 

 a short time seems to have elapsed since w'e entered the year 1901, 

 and jet it, too, has passed into history and 1902 has followed so 

 closely we scarcely realize that we have already entered upon 

 the year 1903. But such is the case, and during the year 

 that has just passed it has been supposed that twenty 

 millions of souls have been ushered upon the stage of human events, 

 while nearly as many have laid them down in their last long sleep, 

 thus demonstrating the truth of the answer to "What is life?" "It 

 is even a A^apor that appeareth for a little time, then vanishes away." 

 If time then be so precious, how judiciously should we use it and 

 how minutely use the passing moments that once gone can never be 

 recalled. Advancement seems the watchword all along the line of 

 inventive action, and yet who would or could deny the apathy into 

 which the inhabitants of our pleasant valley have fallen. 



True, we are improving our farms, beautifying to some extent our 

 homes and landscape, but the true art of sociability, alas, has been 

 left as a rose among thorns, or as the beautiful among the rubbish 

 of some depopulated city. This awful catastrophe came not in a 

 day, a month or a year. Hence its cloven foot was not demonstrated 

 as a direct evil until it had gained prestige and such a hold upon 

 the surrounding mass of people that it will become a herculean task 

 to break its massive chain and set the community once more at lib- 

 erty and ease. How shall we accomplish this task? I shall leave to 

 you, my friends, and trust that before we leave this hall such means, 

 such measures, shall have been demonstrated as shall loose us from 

 the vast enthraldom. 



