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Essex County is historic. It is the second only in the period 

 of its settlement, in Massachusetts and in New England, — or 

 third, if we allow precedence to the beginning at Portsmouth. 

 It has its historic centre, and has always had its men of historic 

 spirit. It is scientific, with its institutions and men in that 

 line of note. It is agricultural, as we know, with thoroughness 

 and spirit among its farmers. It has been commercial, and 

 preserves still the traditions of foreign traffic. It is manufac- 

 turing in wonderful variety. We can clothe a man in cotton 

 and wool and linen, and jute if he chooses, of our own 

 fashioning, and can put a hat on his head and shoes on his 

 feet — having before that tanned his hides. We can then teach 

 him theology, and something of patent medicines, and send him 

 away in a railroad car or pleasure carriage made to his order, 

 and ballasted, to steady his theology, with machinery for spin- 

 ning, or weaving, or sewing, or threshing ; or with stone to 

 build a town. We have our quiet rural homes, our villages, 

 our cities, not large, but many and making all the district 

 populous, our residences for rest and pleasure along the sea, 

 and then, characteristic and unique, beyond the land, and from 

 off all our shores, these fishers, these husbandmen of the deep. 



I can not now suffer this occasion to pass without mention of 

 the blow that has lately fallen upon this interest of the fisher- 

 men, and upon this town in which we are assembled.* It has 

 happened to me, in a former year, to have been here and in 

 these neighboring towns, while tidings were hourly arriving 

 from the scenes of a similar destruction ; and I have heard 

 thus before these sounds of simultaneous and general mourn- 

 ing. But this latest disaster, of but a month ago, is without 

 example even in your experience. I bring you to-day, in 

 behalf of these your brethren, the husbandmen of the land, 

 our regrets at the misfortune that has befallen you in your 

 business, and our deeper sympathy for the loss from your 



* By the great storm of August 24th, eight fishing vessels, as is supposed at the 

 time of this writing, were lost with their crews ; three times as many more 

 were stranded, or totally disabled. And the number of men in all that perished 

 may not, it is feared, fall much short of one hundred and fifty. 



