ADDRESS. 



Mr. President and Fellow Members of the Essex 

 Agricultural Society : 



Thoreau, the keen observer, the philosopher of nature, 

 walking along the southern exposure of his neighbor's 

 hill-top on a first day of March, noted in his journal 



''It is spring there, and Minot is puttering outside in 

 the sun. How wise in his grandfather to select such a 

 site for his house." 



The Essex Agricultural Society, the honored guild of 

 the farmers of Essex, has had a corporate existence of 

 seventy-five years, having been incorporated in 1818. 



To-day occurs the seventieth annual address. The 

 Psalmist says that "three score years and ten are the 

 length of man's days." The unbounded vitality of our 

 Society after seventy-five years of usefulness is a strik- 

 ing reversal of Shakespeare's aphorism "The evil that 

 men do lives after them." We can say the good that 

 men do lives after them. 



At such a milestone perhaps we may rest for one day 

 from learned discussions and philosophical essays and 

 glance back over the way we have traveled and then for- 

 ward to see what lies before us. 



There is a fraternity of race blood in this Society 

 which may not be apparent to outsiders. Strangers may 



