16 WOECESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1892. 



It may seem to some who have bestowed but shallow reflec- 

 tion upon the subject that I am wasting time upon a jejune 

 theme. To my mind there can be no exaggeration of the vital 

 importance to the future welfare of Worcester County of a care- 

 ful, systematic development of its orchards. We should find 

 competitors, to be sure; notably from Nova Scotia and, in a 

 lesser degree, Michigan or Western New York. But we pos- 

 sess an advantage over all but Nova Scotia, in our proximity to 

 the ocean — a highway to the best market. Everything else 

 depends upon ourselves. Terra3culturists, — we require no 

 bounty ; not even upon our maple-trees, from which the sap has 

 flowed for centuries, without let or hindrance. It is not ours to 

 manufacture ; so that if we do not share in the high per cent- 

 ages, neither do we underlie the dire necessity of frying upon 

 the political gridiron ! Quite recently are we told that we 

 ought not to cry if we can no longer work in Iron ; that the dis- 

 crimination against us is of Divine origin, and that, being 

 assured of His will, we should either emigrate to the ore-beds 

 or, if we conclude to stay where we were born, grin and bear 

 it ! taking our medicine like little men. But is not the voice, 

 the voice of Jacob, all the while? And the local orchardist, 

 who is not prepared to grow fruit, at a profit, for workmen in 

 Waukegan, may wisely ponder if the policy advocated by Ames 

 and the elder Moen was not better calculated to gather ready 

 mouths for his produce ! If, in good sooth, it is not Congress, 

 rather than the Deity, that sits down heavily on scrap-iron ; and 

 the squeak of Sir Oracle instead of the voice of the Lord that 

 attunes its individual needs to its own dissonance from every 

 village stump. I would give many a shekel for the privilege of 

 witnessing an interview between the Belials* of this new dispen- 

 sation and the shade of Ichabod Washburn, wherein they should 

 essay to convince that hard-handed, clear-headed son of Vulcan 

 that he erred in coming, without statf or scrip, to Worcester ; 

 but should rather have set up his anvil in that favored spot of 

 earth where coal, ore, and flux, jostle each other in their sepa- 

 rate matrices ; yet where man, insatiate and selfish, eternally 



*" Skilled to make the worse appear the better reason." 



