it 



care to go out now, when its dark and rainy, do you?" "No, not particular." 

 "Well, then," said Stark, "if the Lord should once more give us sunshine, 

 and I do not give you fighting enough, I will never ask you to come again." 

 And he was as good as his word. General Stark sent to the Assembly of Mass- 

 achusetts, as trophies of this battle, a Hessian gun and bayonet, broadsword 

 and brass-barreled drum, with a grenadier's cap, which are still to be seen on 

 the walls of our Senate Chamber, opposite the President's chair. 



Webster and a majority of the other great men of the past age were the 

 sons of farmers, and poor farmers in a money sense, at that, and in raising 

 such men, and the women who have equalled them, in sending them equipped 

 with health, sense and good morals into the councils of the nations, in the 

 camp to defend the country, iuto the wilds to open up the wilderness and make 

 it blossom as the rose, into the west to develop its resources, farming has paid, 

 and the whole country acknowledges its indebtedness to it. No chapters in the 

 volumes of our country's history better repays perusal than those which show 

 how the farmers of Massachusetts and Connecticut recruited the armies of 

 congress during our revolutionary war ; how they supplied those armies with 

 provisions without charge, and with what equanimity the husbandmen of those 

 states and New Jersey bore the raids of the British and Hessians, who despoiled 

 them of their goods, burnt their houses, and often murdered or carried into 

 captivity the husbands and sons. The blood of the sires stirred again in th 

 veins of the descendants during the recent rebellion, and the yeoman of New 

 England, and their kindred at the west, attested with their lives their belief in 

 the principles and traditions of their ancestors, and again the virtues of our self- 

 sacrificing and industrious forefathers have brought our country through an- 

 other struggle for existence. It is only within a very recent period that the 

 cry has gone up from every quarter, "Does it pay ?" Our senators and repre- 

 sentatives to Congress of the last generation gloried in being respectably poor 

 and expected to return to their homes no richer than they went away. The 

 richest men were not then selected, as intellect and honesty were valued before 

 wealth, and it is related that as the members of the N. H. Legislature assembled 

 in the State House some years ago before the session commenced, an aged far- 

 mer, who proved to be a man of good sense, appeared among them very poorly 

 clad. Be was told that that room was for members of the Legislature. He 

 replied that he was a member elect from such a town, and added, "There are 

 men in our town better qualified for the work of legislation than I am, hut they 

 had not clothes fit to wear here.' 1 ' We send a good many representatives 

 now-a-days to Congress and "general court" who wear good clothes enough but 

 have a failing in heart and head like the horse and man in the following anec- 

 dote : A would-be wag overtaking an old minister w hose nag was much fa- 

 tigued, quizzed him thus: "A nice horse yours, Doctor— very valuable beast 

 that you are riding, but what makes him wag his tail so V " The same that 

 causes your tongue to wag so, — a sort of natural weakness,''' 1 was the old gen- 

 tleman's reply. During the long session ol our legislature, last, winter and 

 spring, a man from the country was talking with a citizen of Boston, near the 

 State House, when he asked him, "Is that a gas house?/' "Yes/' wa* the 



