BERKSHIRE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 





X 



the lint is picked for binding wounds ; here bandages are made 

 for broken limbs and aching heads ; here songs are sung into the 

 ears of the sorrowing and dying ; here the naked are clothed and 

 the hungry fed ; here dead souls inhale the breath of a life that 

 never dies ; for this story rises into a summer house of God when 

 the work of praise warms and strengthens for the mightiest works 

 of man. 



But few are found here who have not done hard work in the 

 basement. It takes the work of all the three to form the finest 

 and noblest life. It is only those who have labored exhaustively 

 in the basement, who know how to sympathize with those who 

 bear the crushing burdens of life ; and those who have risen from 

 the fields of blistering toil into the possession of millions and love 

 not this healing sympathy, are traitors to their own history, and 

 the shylocks that insist on their pound of flesh and get it. There 

 was no slave-driver that cracked his whip more savagely than the 

 slave elevated to that brutal office. We know men, who thirty or 

 forty years ago, were working in a tan-yard, or peddling tin, or 

 the sons of poor country ministers, or hauling ore with a mule 

 team, or digging in the gold gulches of California, who are to-day 

 worth millions and millions and adding to the mounded wealth 

 millions on millions, piling up, piling up ; but not one of this 

 style of wealthy men are doing largely for the poor class from 

 which they came, and for the poor who 'have helped make their 

 fortunes. But the men who work up from the basement to the 

 summer house of God that crowns this House of Labor, are the 

 noblest men. I don't know of a meaner man than a man of 

 wealth who disowns his poor relative. 



Here, then, we come to the true ideal of labor, where we see 

 one of its grandest productions — imperial class — not one which is 

 not the result of this all-taxing labor. Take a few illustrations : 

 See these magnificent singers. I have mentioned Jenny Lind, she 

 was a peasant girl ; Neilson, another peasant girl, who is now 

 thrilling millions of hearts ; Miss Clara Louise Kellogg, who was 

 born among the rocks of Barkhamsted. This singer, walking 

 among the rocks of her native town, came in contact with a big 

 black snake ; but she did not run, but attacked the monster, and 

 fulfilled the promise that the seed of the woman should bruise the 

 serpent's head. Brave girl ! she could not only capture the black 

 snake, — could conquer the admiration of kings and queens, princes 

 and noblemen, in the orchestras of England and musical Germany. 

 But I cannot go through with this galaxy of splendid names who 



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