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As for our own immense continent, which we have an indisputable 

 commission to subdue and to till, let us for a moment try to look at it 

 as it will be in the lifetime of hundreds of thousands of our children. 

 Think, if you can, of the future farms and gardens bordering the two 

 hundred thousand miles of river banks of this republic ! Think of 

 that glorious variety due to the climates, all of which, from tropical 

 heat to the northern cold ! from the low levels to the lofty plains ! Of 

 the myriads of sheep browsing on the sides of your yet untouched 

 chains of hills and mountains peculiar to that fleecy race. See your 

 improved breeds of oxen, by millions taking the place of the buffalo 

 on your mighty western plains, fit for your markets when weighing 

 from two to Jive thousand pounds each. See your acres by the genius 

 of chemistry, and perhaps by electricity, united with the well in- 

 structed and persevering industry of the cultivator, bearing, not the 

 French six and a half for one, but ten times that amount, of the purest 

 wheat. 



See your roads and division lines, marked, not by choke pears, sour 

 apples, and poor nuts, but by endless rows of the hundred varieties of 

 most delicious pears, apples and nuts. I mean by the latter, Madeira 

 nuts and others, including the finest walnuts, which may just as read- 

 ily be grown as the bad ones. 



See every farm-house and cottage, with its silk growing department. 

 See the pound weight clusters of choice cultivated grapes, in the hands 

 of every boy and girl ! And remember that by the movement, on 

 railroads as it soon will be, you can safely pass through a thousand 

 miles of such a country, in two or three days ! Every market of the 

 Northern States may be supplied daily with the fruits and flowers of 

 the tropics — and the invalids of either climate will be transferred with 

 comfort to any position advised by a physician. On the appearance 

 of threatening storms, the patient will be sent, faster than the gale, to 

 a belter clime, imitating the birds who flee before a tempest and keep 

 their feathers dry ! 



Ladies, allow me in the enthusiasm of the moment, to turn your 

 attention to the future cultivation of flowers. They belong to you of 

 ancient right. Their lovely goddes is one of you. Flora ! We have 

 not yet begun to see afield of flowers ! Botanists have made mighty 

 additions to floral wealth, by searching most parts of the earth for 

 specimens. But up to this time, they have only designated one 



