24 



REMAKKS OF HON. ALLEN W. DODGE. 



Mr. Dodge said that lie knew no reason wliy he should he 

 called upon to be first to address the society, except that ha^•- 

 ing served it so long as Secretary and President in years gone 

 by, he might seem to be a connecting link between the past 

 and the present. He esteemed it a privilege to have aided to 

 the best of his ability in promoting the prosperity of a society 

 comprising so many of the farmers of Old Essex. This an- 

 nual festival — this old-fashioned Cattle-Show — was the only 

 holiday they could find time to participate in. Others had 

 their long summer vacations, when the preacher left his })ulpit, 

 the judge his bench, the lawyer his brief, the teacher, and his 

 scholars, too, their books, and went hunting, and fishing, and 

 rusticating, to lay in a stock of health to carry them through 

 the year. But the farmers had to toil on year in and year out, 

 to make both ends of it meet. And to-day his great joy in 

 coming here is, to meet other farmers, to inspect their choice 

 specimens of the products of the field, the stall and the dairy, 

 to witness the plowing and the drawing match, and to compare 

 notes, so as to raise his own standard of good husbandry, and 

 incite others — especially the young men — to aim at the best 

 results. It was only high farming — a liberal and judicious 

 outlay of capital in stock, tools, fertilizers and labor — that 

 would pay. But over and above all other motives to exertion, 

 was the noble ambition that should fire the breast of every 

 young farmer, to leave the paternal acres better than he found 

 them, remembering that he who makes two blades of grass 

 grow where Init one grew before, is a benefactor of his race. 



Mr. Dodge congratulated the officers and members of the 

 Society, on the success of the Exhibition, and urged them to 

 2,0 on io make each succeedino- exhibition better and better, so 

 as to meet the demands of a progressive agriculture and of a 

 conununity that they had helped educate in all that pertains to 

 -the u'arden and tlie farm. 



