14 DR. spofford's address. 



settle down into anything like the moral and religious society of 

 New England, is yet to be decided. 



An intelligent gentleman with whom I lately conversed, who 

 went from this county in 1817, and resides in one of the principal 

 cities on the Ohio, and who has been more successful in his 

 pursuits than most of his fellow emigrants, says he would not 

 advise any one to go into the western valley who is comfortably 

 situated as to business or property here. A long life scarcely 

 serves to wean a person of common sensibility from the faces of 

 his friends and the tombs of his ancestors. To thousands who 

 have gone out from among us, New England will still be their 

 " Aome," and the western valley their place of exile. 



It is true, my friends, that you might go where you would find 

 a deeper soil and a milder climate, or you may command a wider 

 extent of territory, and live with less labor — but who of you 

 would exchange your " sloping hills" and your granite fences, for 

 the vast prairies and wooden fences of the west ? 



Who of you would leave your warm barns and well-fed flocks, 

 that you might see your cattle picking a precarious existence, 

 through the winter, in marshes and fens, or shivering with wet 

 and cold around an uncovered haystack ? 



Who, to avoid the drifting snow and driving sleet, would 

 l^ave the land of pleasant sleighrides, and happy winter 

 evenings, to breath the sirocco, which sweeps from the Gulf 

 of Mexico for weeks tog^her, up the boundless valley, loaded 

 with the fetid exhalations of a thousand bayous and swamps ? 



The cold seasons of 1812 and 181G, and the intermediate 

 years, produced a disposition in many to abandon their native 

 land, as though nature had changed, and the divine promise of 

 seed time and harvest had failed ; but the profusion with 

 which the fruits of the earth have been showered around us, 

 for the last fifteen years, should teach every farmer to value 

 his soil, to be content with his climate, and never to distrust the 

 faithfulness of Him who governs the seasons. 



Alternate showers and sunshine have covered the earth with 

 a luxuriance of fruit which has literally compelled many of you 

 " to pull down your barns and build greater." 



