ADDEESS. 



Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: 



" Brevity," it has been said, " is the soul of wit." 

 I know not but that it may be pronounced the soul of 

 an agricultural address as well. Short crops are the 

 special aversion of farmers, but not, if I understand 

 them, short speeches or short addresses. They are 

 men of deeds, rather than of words, and prefer fruit to 

 leaves. I have too much respect for this trait of mind 

 or feeling in the farmer unnecessarily to multiply 

 w^ords, and I begin with the firm resolution to impose 

 restraint upon m^^self, and not to exceed reasonable 

 limits. 



I felicitate myself that in addressing the farmers of 

 Norfolk, I am speaking to intelligent and thoughtful 

 men, who will not deem the subject I have chosen too 

 abstract or too far removed from the beaten track for 

 this occasion. I wish to say something of agricultural 

 life in some of its intellectual aspects, — in other words, 

 of reading and intellectual culture in the fanner. Do 

 not misapprehend me. I am not going to insist that 

 the farmer should be a man of many books, or engage 

 in any abstruse studies, — that he should lose himself 

 in the fog of metaphysics, — that he should become an 

 adept in chemical or botanical science or gcologj^, or 



