WINTER MEETING. 131 



Mother Earth than he does to all the other elements combined. In 

 this state of nature, as man is fettered by the forces of gravitation to 

 the bosom of the earth, he feels in that warm bosom his largest com- 

 fort and his chief sustenance, and he is ingrate indeed if ever for one 

 moment he fails to remember the loyalty and the profound regard with 

 which he should ever consider her. 



Agricultural and horticultural has always claimed the largest share 

 of my attention, from the fact that we live by and from the bounty of 

 the Mother Earth. As our chief sustenance springs from her own gen- 

 erous impulses, so also do those luxuries which she has been accus- 

 tomed to offer for the gratification of more testhetic tastes and more 

 refined and cultivated desires. So long as a man recognizes the need 

 and the propriety of loyalty and deference to the Mother Earth, and 

 so long as he holds in profound veneration the arts of the peace, so 

 long will society flourish and humanity may hope to achieve the very 

 largest and best results. It is at once the most innocent, the most 

 pure, the most ennobling and the most useful of the arts and sciences. 

 From the very morning of time, when man in his purity was created 

 to be a tiller of the soil, and since when he went forth banished from 

 his primal home and his divine estate, it was still as a tiller of the soil ; 

 I repeat, it is not only first in point of time, but it is likewise first in 

 point of importance. I see about me upon every side, as I observe 

 the progress of the world, unmistakable evidence that man in these 

 latter days is more and more awakening to the necessity of returning 

 to first principles and giving more careful attention to the simpler and 

 yet grander and more satisfying occupations, which bring him more 

 closely to the bosom of nature. 



I am very well satisfied of the fact that man is to find his largest 

 measure of enjoyment, he is to find his chief happiness and his largest 

 development, and the world is to realize its golden age only when our 

 farming interests are magnified and multiplied, and when the Hegira 

 from the farm to the city shall cease and there shall be reflex tide, 

 emptying out of our cities their surplus population, and shall send 

 them out to the country to grow wise and strong, that they may make 

 glad the wilderness and cause theT desert to blossom as the rose. I 

 am very sure that that day will come. Men are growing wiser and 

 better with the onward march of time. Grim visaged war must sooner or 

 later smooth its wrinkled front, and man, instead of going forth to 

 battle with his fellow-men. or capering to the lascivious music of the 

 waltz, must go into the fields and guide the plow-share, and in the very 

 divinest art of peace, he must keep step with the moving columns of 

 the Grand Army of Progress, which God has called and ordained to 



