ADDKESS. 



A short time since I was called upon to deliver an Inaugural Address, in 

 which I endeavored to lay down the principles of the highest and best educa- 

 tion. And I felt called upon to say, what I here repeat, that the great want of 

 our times is not so much that we may know how to produce more, as that we 

 may know how to rightly use what we have. Nothing is more evident than that 

 two families with the same numbers and having the same income, get very dif- 

 ferent degrees of enjoyment out of their means. Some families will live for one- 

 half that another family spends, and live better — have more real enjoyment 

 from life than the other. So, as 1 come to this Fair and see these beautiful 

 products of the soil, these specimeus of handicraft, these evidences of produc- 

 tion, I ask myself this question : — Do the people know how to use to the 

 best advantage these products of their labor f or, are these products to 

 pass back again to the dust of the earth, having done half their work for 

 man ; having done none at all ; or, perchance, having proved a curse to 

 him f These are important questions, for all production which is not made 

 fully subservient to human progress and human happiness, is so much labor in 

 vain. And, in mj r opinion, very much of the hum and toil of business is as 

 useless as the wind that sweeps through the cordage of a ship that is fast 

 anchored in harbor. It may be wafting other ships on their course, but for 

 that ship fast anchored it wears away its cable and hastens the destruction of 

 the whole fabric. 



I propose then, to-day, to step aside from the ordinary, and perhaps the natu- 

 ral, course of thought <>n such an occasion as this, to speak to you of the rela- 

 tion of agricultural and mechanical pursuits to social life — to New England 

 Home Life. 



If there is any subject that would seem to he worn threadbare, it is agricul- 

 ture, so far as it can form the Btaple of an address. But some subjects never 

 become trite — are never out of date, and cannot be too often repeated. And 

 next to the truths that feed and strengthen our higher nature, are the truths 

 that pertain to this physical life. All that renders life more sure, more enjoy- 

 able, more perfect in all its relations and changes, never loses its interest to the 

 thinkers of the race. The wonders of machinery, the fertility of soils, the 



