22 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



Mr. President, j'ours is the advancing column of the coming in- 

 dustry of the Pine Tree State. You are the representatives of 

 the higher life of the farmer. It cannot be denied that there is much 

 in the farmer's life that is purely and simply drudger}-, that never 

 enlists his higher and nobler sj'mpathies. But here is something en- 

 nobling and refining, something that captivates the mind. A man 

 falls in love with it as the artist falls in love with his ideal. He 

 commences with his tree no larger than his whipstick, and when it 

 differs not much from the forest sapling or the sapling at the way- 

 side, but he knows that inside of that bark there is the germ of a 

 delicious, soul-inspiring fruit. He plants it, he waters it, and trims 

 and educates it, and treats it as a thing of life ; he follows it up 

 through its slow growth and development until he sees it bud and 

 blossom, and then the long-wished-for and long-waited-for fruit 

 appears, and his soul has a satisfaction that the mere toiler for 

 mone}' knows not of. 



Gentlemen, we welcome 3'ou to Franklin County, one of the 

 smallest and humblest of the family of counties. Yet even here 

 we have felt the pulsations of that new blood that has entered into 

 the veins and arteries of the "body politic." Just as you enter the 

 gateway of the county, there is a granite hill, which in the days of 

 which I have been speaking, was barren and unsightly, and of value 

 only as it furnished the underpinning for the few straggling houses 

 in the vicinity, and for the outlying villages. During the year 1886 

 that hill has been the scene of a busy industry. One hundred and 

 eighty-one skilled men have quarried and shipped eleven hundred 

 and forty-six (1146) car loads of "paving blocks" for the streets of 

 the great city of Cincinnati. They have also quarried and shipped 

 six hundred (600) car loads of granite for the Maine Central Rail- 

 road and its branches, for bridges, culverts, and other masonry. 



Other parties have cut out and shipped stone for monuments and 

 building purposes, to the amount of fifty car loads more ; and all 

 this in addition to the ordinary home consumption. 



Coming still farther into the county, there has been built within a 

 few years a railroad up under the shadow of Mt. Blue and be- 

 yond, and the great "inland seas" of Northern Maine have been 

 opened up, where the whole piscatorial fraternity of the country can 

 come and gratify that immortal longing which has been transmitted 

 down from or through Isaac Walton. Still more recently, a railroad 

 has been built up towards the approaches of Mt. Abram, and 



