ADDRESS. 



BY COL. THEODORE LYMAN, OF BROOKLINE. 



Although the schools of political economy quarrel about 

 almost everything, there is one point of agreement among 

 them, to wit : that crops make an addition to the wealth of a 

 country. 



Let those of us who think they are annually losing money 

 on their land take courage from this principle, and reflect 

 that they are laboring under the approving eye of the politi- 

 cal economists. In the very nature of things it seems as if 

 digging the earth ought to bring something good to pass. 

 The Greeks, who seldom went wrong in a name, called earth 

 Mother ; the mother from whom all come and to whom all 

 return ; the mother who teaches her children this lesson, 

 that food follows work, and without work there is no food ; 

 the mother who tames her wild offspring by long and steady 

 discipline of toil. For man is by nature a destroyer and a 

 waster. The savage kills fish and game, and snatches wild 

 berries and roots, thoughtless of their decrease. In the an- 

 cient shell-heaps of Denmark, or in the river gravels of France, 

 we find the mute record of such savages who once peopled 

 the larger part of Central Europe. It is a dreary record — 

 everything for waste and nothing for renewal. The flint 

 hatchets, knives and arrow-heads, the piles of shells, the bones 

 of deer and of wild oxen, split to get out the marrow — all 

 denote a race that took what they could from nature, and return- 



