and strains and types, — which modern specialism has 

 brougfht to ligfht since the establishment of schools of hus- 

 bandry a centnry ago — since the introduction of agricul- 

 tural chemistry, a branch of science only half a century of 

 age. Or he ma}^ content himself and perhaps his audience 

 with reading a prose idyl on the charms of country living. 



But again he may abandon all this. There are still 

 other topics open to the speaker, which, if he be of an 

 antiquarian turn, he will find it difficult indeed to resist. 

 He is addressing a society now four score years of age. 

 It has its local traditions and a story which no son of Essex 

 can but recall with pride. It bears recorded on its honor- 

 able roll, most of the brightest names this ancient, popu- 

 lous, intelligent and historic section has produced. It 

 embraces a whole County, and that County the third in 

 population, wealth and rank, in all the fourteen counties 

 of the State, — a county second to none in the variety of its 

 industries, in the character, thrift, culture and achieve- 

 ments of its people, or, for it embraces Beverly, Glouces- 

 ter, Manchester, Topsfield, Andover and the Merrimac, in 

 the grandeur of its ocean scenery or in the quiet, winning 

 beauty of its rural landscape. He is addressing a society 

 which had for its founder in 1817-18 no less a personage 

 than that stalwart old Roman — that modern Cincinnatus, 

 that stormy-petrel of Massachusetts politics, — Colonel 

 Timothy Pickering — and the temptation to any one who 

 knows his checkered and extraordinary career, — you re- 

 member that he took your first prize at a plowing match, 

 when seventy-five years old, — the temptation to postjDone 

 all else until he has exhausted that, is so imperious, —so well 

 nigh irresistible, tliat only the imminence of the dinner 

 hour, and an increasing sense of the emptiness of things 

 below, is able to restrain me from inviting you to listen to 

 an abstract of his life. 



Turning his face from this engaging picture, the orator 



