AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 473 



■vrill then turn herself to the consideration of this subject with 

 an intensity commensurate with its importance. She will be- 

 hold with pain the best blood of her sons turning their backs 

 upon the homes of their youth and the good old Commonwealth 

 of their love and their pride, and their faces to the rich prairies 

 and abundant harvest of the teeming West. And though, like a 

 fond mother, she may boast that it is the enterprise and indom- 

 itable will of her sons that have written themselves far above 

 competition in every distant field, yet this exultant pride can- 

 not but be saddened by the consciousness that all these achieve- 

 ments of her sons abroad must be at the expense of her own 

 household at home ; that the old patrimonial estate of Massa- 

 chusetts Bay and Plymouth Colony is in danger of losing its 

 attractions for the sons of the Pilgrims, and that the youthful 

 energies and expanding resources of other States are drawing 

 away to their full bosoms that strong, that irrepressible, irre- 

 sistible Yankee character to which 



" None but itself can be its parallel !" — 



and which if it could- find room at home for its expansion, and 

 material on which to expend its superabundant life, would make 

 its mother State the rival of the world. 



When, I say, Massachusetts not only sees but feels all this, 

 then will she, in self-defence, turn her thoughts to the remedy. 

 And then will you behold the walls of such an institution as I 

 have delineated, beginning to rise — not rapidly like a gourd in 

 the night — but slowly, and form deep and permanent founda- 

 tions. It is but a question of time. Sooner or later that day 

 will come, to gladden the hearts and gild the dawning hopes of 

 the farmers of this Commonwealth. The spirit which is being 

 awakened throughout the State, of which such societies as this, 

 with their annual exhibitions, are at once the evidence and the 

 origin, is hastening on that day. 



My only apprehension is that the languishing powers, — the 

 recuperative energies of our soil and our enterprise, — may be 

 sufi'ered to sink below revival, and that the spirits of the sons 

 of these hills may be condemned to the pressure of such bur- 

 dens so long that they may lose that elasticity which, with free 

 scope and room, ever bound into the full proportions and per- 

 60* 



