46 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



came with a portion of his flock from Berkshire, came to 

 Stark with this communicatien : "We, the people of Berk- 

 shire, have beeu frequently called upon to fight, but have 

 never been led against the enemy. We have now resolved, 

 if you will not let us fight, never to turn out again." Stark 

 looked at him for a moment, in some doubt whether this was 

 a piece of border fuu or not, then said : "You do not care to 

 go out now, when it is dark and rainy, do you?" "No, not 

 particular." "Well, then," said Stark, "if the Lord should 

 once more give us sunshine, and I do not give you fighting 

 enough, I will never ask you to come again." And he was as 

 good as his word. General Stark sent to the Assembly of 

 Massachusetts, as trophies of this battle, a Hessian gun and 

 bayonet, broadsword and brass-barreled drum, with a grena- 

 dier's cap, which are still to be seen on the walls of our Senate 

 Chamber, opposite the President's chair. 



Webster and a majority of the other great men of the past 

 age were the sons of farmers, and poor farmers, in a money 

 sense, at that ; and in raising such men, and the women who 

 have equalled them, — in sending them, equipped with health, 

 sense and good morals, into the councils of the nation, in the 

 camp to defend the country, into the wilds to open up the 

 wilderness and make it blossom as the rose, into the West to 

 develop its resources, — farming has paid, and the whole 

 country acknowledges its indebtedness to it. No chapters in 

 the volumes of our country's history better repay perusal 

 than those which show how the farmers of Massachusetts and 

 Connecticut recruited the armies of Congress during our 

 revolutionary war ; how they supplied those armies with pro- 

 visions without charge, and with what equanimity the husband- 

 men of those States and New Jersey bore the raids of the 

 British and Hessians, who despoiled them of their goods, 

 burnt their houses, and often murdered or carried into cap- 

 tivity the husbands and sons. The blood of the sires stirred 

 again in the veins of the descendants during the recent rebel- 

 lion, and the yeomen of New England, and their kindred at 

 the West, attested with their lives their belief in the principles 

 and traditions of their ancestors ; and again the virtues of our 

 self-sacrificing and industrious forefathers have brought our 

 country through another struggle for existence. It is only 



