ADDRESS, 



BY HON. ALFRED A. ABBOTT, OF SOUTH DANVERS, 



Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Society : — 



Since your last public festival, another year with its 

 rolling seasons has passed away, and again we are gathered 

 together, to hold iriendly communion, to witness the result of 

 each other's neyv experiences, to exchange congratulations upon 

 what has been accomplished, to gather fresh courage for futni-e 

 labors, and reverently to acknowledge and devoutly to thank 

 that kind Providence, which, sending the sunshine and the rain 

 alike upon the just and the unjust, has smiled upon our efforts 

 and has crowned all with his blessing. We meet to-day under 

 circumstances peculiar and unparalleled in the history of tliis 

 Society, now celebrating its forty-foui'th anniversary. To be 

 sure, all Nature is the same, — in none of her great operations 

 has there been any change. No earthquake has shaken, no 

 famine scourged the land, no pestilence has walked in th.e 

 darkness or wasted at noon-day. The seasons have come and 

 gone in their appointed order. Seed time and harvest have 

 not failed. Upon the hills and valleys, the fields and meatl- 

 ows, which, when we last met, were rejoicing in the ripening 

 crops, and from which our barns and granaries were plenteous- 



