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country. By their liberal investments in a studious 

 and methodical culture of the soil, and in improving the 

 quality of the animals, they have rendered a beneficent 

 service to the cause of agriculture -, and, in return, re- 

 ceiving by contagion the sweet influences of the heav- 

 ens and the earth which have been spread out before 

 them in the open country, and which have inspired them 

 with sentiments far above the thoughts of ordinary com- 

 merce, they have carried back to the marts of business 

 a new and more genial soul, wdiich spreads like sunlight 

 over others, and warms them to follow the example. 



Mr. President, when I think of these indirect bless- 

 ings which even the lighter attention to agriculture has 

 conferred upon a great class of our people whose lead- 

 ing interests are in other pursuits, it appears to me that 

 we ought to encourage and spread the example. In a 

 large number of these cases it may be called senti- 

 mental, but it is none the worse for that. Of sentiment, 

 which is quite too frequently called sentimentalism, we 

 have little to discard or to spare in our life of routine 

 and practicality. If the country boy, converted into a 

 metropolitan merchant by jenYS of application and en- 

 grossment amid the cares and perils of the town, shall 

 be drawn back to his earl}^ love, whether by instinct or 

 interest, or accident, he becomes only justly as he 

 should be, the benefactor of the class among whom his 

 own first breath was born, and his own heart first was 

 moulded. Though you may call him a benefactor, he is 

 a debtor still to them. Within the past few years it 

 has been my opportunity to lodge in this county under 

 the roofs of several whom we know as merchant princes 

 in the capital, but whose greater and more genuine 

 wealth lies in the exaltation and expansion which agri- 



