ADDRESS. 



GENTLEMEN AND LADIES : 



Rather against my own judgment but in accordance with the 

 wishes of my friends, the officers of this Association, I have con- 

 sented to give you an informal talk, which I see is announced as a 

 practical address upon such topics as are of interest to farmers. 



I hope, in what I have to say, to be very practical. I promise 

 you that I shall be very brief and will not long detain you from the 

 many things of interest which are presented for your inspectfon 

 upon these grounds. 



You remember how it is related that when the hosts of Assyria 

 besieged the city of Samaria, the supplies of food becoming ex- 

 hausted the famine reached such terrible proportions that an ass's 

 head was sold for eight score pieces of silver, and the inhabitants 

 of the doomed city were driven even to cannibalism. You remem- 

 ber that at this crisis in their affairs the prophet Elisha predicted 

 that within the short period of twenty-four hours two measures of 

 barley would be sold in the streets of that city for a shekel and a 

 measure of fine meal for a shekel, and how such incredible results 

 actually came about through the change in conditions brought 

 about by the stampeding of the beleaguring hosts of Assyria. 



Now I am not a prophet nor the son of a prophet, nor are the 

 conditions of our agricultural communities in such straits as were 

 the people of that unhappy Jewish capital, though, were we to be- 

 lieve much that is now-a-davs said and published, we might almost 

 te led to think that our farmers were rapidly passing into such 

 conditions. 



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