dered my advice and counsel of value to farmers. You 

 certainly will all discover that I was not chosen because of 

 oratorical powers. My only excuse for being here is that I 

 know something about our calling, having practised it for 

 many years. 



I linow and love every inch of old Essex county, and I know 

 something of its people and their needs, having had long, 

 personal acquaintance with many, and being bound by ties 

 of blood to some of its oldest and best farmers. Born and 

 bred here, with an instinctive love of the soil which noth- 

 ing can eradicate, my first longings were for the life of a 

 farmer, and that, with the world before me, and especially 

 the tempting fields of the West, I was allowed to choose in 

 New England, I am profoundly grateful. 1 do not propose 

 to enlarge upon my personal experience as a farmer except 

 so far as may be necessary to enforce the lesson I desire to 

 teach. 



I have travelled this summer on almost every road and 

 lane in this dear old county, and I have done the same 

 thing almost every year for thirty years or more, and while 

 I notice much improvement in many sections, 1 regret to 

 say that I see a great deal that saddens me. I do not see 

 enough young men on the farms, and I see some farms 

 from which the old people have been carried to their graves, 

 left deserted, the house a prey to the destroying elements, 

 the barn crushed by winter snows. 



This is a sad picture in a flourishing, thriving county. 

 It seems not unnatural where, in some almost howling 

 wilderness, far from all centres of civilization, as some 

 portions of our neighboring states are, one section in par- 



