And in the later struggle, when the nation war-welded its 

 unity and emancipated a race from bondage, Essex County 

 gave its full share of patriotic devotion and patriots' blood, 

 for America's redemption and Liberty's cause. Truly this 

 county is historic. We are rich in our common American 

 traditions of trjdng times and prophetic spirits, with some 

 traditions peculiarly our own ; and we can scarcely have a 

 better hope for the county's future than that it shall be 

 faithful to its past. 



The natives of Essex County have also reason to hold in 

 affectionate regard the landscape on which their eyes first 

 saw the light. The topography of the county averages 

 well. It has neither mountains nor deserts. Across the 

 entire country runs the industrious and beautiful river 

 Merrimac, its industry serving within our domain to turn 

 the spindles of Lawrence and the shoe-machines of Haver- 

 hill ; its picturesque beauty being such as moved Whittier 

 to grateful song The landscape of the County, with its 

 numerous irrigating streams, its graceful hills, its fertile 

 valleys and plains, its unsurpassed fringe of ocean with its 

 cape running out into the sea, its ocean worn rocks, its 

 musical beaches, its safe harbors and romantic ocean coves, 

 around some of which the rocks are wild and broken and 

 around others the summer grass comes down as a carpet to 

 the ocean's edge, — the scenery, in a word is such as no 

 appreciative native, wherever he wanders, can ever forget, 

 or to his latest day can wish to forget. 



And the county's attractions in its personnel, its men and 

 women, can to the native-born citizen scarcely be second 

 to either its historical or natural attractions. The natiye 

 born citizens of this county, I am wont to think, do no 

 discredit either to its liistory or its soil. Great names have 

 added their lustre to the county. Here Nathaniel 

 Hawthorne was born, the man having the most distinctive 

 imagination of any man in his century. Here John 

 Greenleaf Whittier was born, the lovable man who has 



