secondly, the advantages attending agriculture in thi» 

 County ; thirdly, the benefits to be derived from such an 

 agricultural society, as is here represented. 



I select these aspects of our subject for discussion with 

 you, farmers of Essex County, because I cannot hope to do 

 better for 3'ou than to help you, if it is ever so little, to 

 grateful content and reasonable ambition in the precise 

 places which the falling of the providential lines have al- 

 loted to you. 



A claim made for Essex County by an excellent histo- 

 rian, — a claim made conspicuous by being placed on the 

 first page of his book, — is this: "The most 'historical 

 county in America." As I am not a native of the County, 

 it wilFnot of course be expected of me that I shall endorse 

 at quite its maximum this valiant claim. I recall that 

 during the winter of '71-'72, after the great Chicago lire, 

 — the blaze which was started from the lantern which 

 Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicked over while she was milking it 

 on Sunday evening, — that same Mrs. O'Leary's cow was 

 exhibited in the principal cities of the Union at ten cents 

 a sight. That historic cow was on exhibition at the same 

 time in St. Louis, Cincinnati, Buffalo and Omaha, and 

 other places ; it was not, in fact, much of a city, that did 

 not, January 1, 1872, have that cow on exhibition. By a 

 method more honest, yet quite as partial, one can, I sup- 

 pose, find " the most historic county of America," in any 

 State of the Union. I should not like to say to a New 

 Yorker, or a Bostonian, or a Philadelphian, that he does 

 not live in the most historic county of America ; and I am 

 altogether too timorous to suggest to a representative 

 westerner, that he is living in a second-rate historic county. 

 To the native-born citizens all counties, are, no doubt, the 

 most historic. The sky appears highest directly over our 

 heads, and it appears as it recedes, to shut down on the 

 earth ; but when we travel to the uttermost parts we still 

 find the sky to be highest directly over our heads. I con- 



