53 



took it, nor had the savings of sixty years amounted to $500. How 

 he managed to work so long and save so httle, may be best shown 

 by this incident. Not two years since he ordered a tin lantern of 

 the very same pattern as the one used by his gTandfather, which 

 had lasted until that time, and through a thousand punctures emitted 

 one third of the dim Hght of a tallow candle. The peddler vainly 

 expostulated, and even the manufacturer, doubtful of the man's 

 sanity, at first refused to fill the order. The good citizen, however, 

 received and paid for his lantern, firmly believing it to be stiU nnri- 

 valed by any later invention. That there will be men of this stamp 

 who will never look in upon an agi-icultural fair, we doubt not. 

 They are joined to their idols, let them alone. 



Seven years since, a resident of Barre, who had spent among 

 those hiUs his three scox'e years and ten, moved from thence to 

 another State to spend his remaining days with a daughter. Five 

 years afterward he re-visited his old home. A great change had 

 taken place in the interval, for the old man was now blind. From 

 the 'formation of the Worcester North-west Society until his 

 removal, he had been among the first to contribute to the show of 

 stock and the exhibition in the hall. They led him to the fair 

 ground, and as one after another of his old friends came and spoke 

 a kind word and offered the familiar hand, and to him the unseen 

 smile, he at length exclaimed, " I would give $500 for my eyesight , 

 to-day, only one day, that I might see you all ; that I might look in 

 your faces ; look over these fair grounds, and oncie more behold my 

 native hills." But when the eyes fade new sight never comes again ; 

 when the arms or hands are cut oflf new ones never grow again. So 

 men who visit the agricultural fair, not for new thoughts and new 

 methods, not for j)rofit, by faiHng to examine carefully into the re- 

 sults of the hard labor of the progressing, toiling and thinking men, 

 lose that which will never come again. 



In olden times, ministers of the Gospel not many miles from 

 Amherst, ascended before the conclusion of the discourse, even as 

 high as twelfthly, but as Amherst College has diffused hght through 

 different portions of the county, new customs prevail, and the 

 ministers of the Gospel, during the hour, seldom get higher than 

 thirdly. The dry, dull, dead formulas of the pulpit have disappeared 

 before the bright and living eloquence of the present Gospel minis- 

 try. So the Agricultural College is destined by its diffusion of iight, 

 to do for agriculture what the old college has for rehgious teaching. 

 It is but a few years since chemistry was applied to farming, while 



