FIFTY YEARS AGO AND TO-DAY. 121 



building of its own. The Boston Society of Natural 

 History, the Antiquarian Society at Worcester, not to 

 mention other societies throughout the country, occupy 

 buildings which they possess through the liberality of 

 their patrons. This society, on the contrary, has had to 

 hire rooms from the moment of its inception to the present 

 time. Its name has been carried, on its publications, to 

 the four quarters of the globe, yet it has never had the 

 supreme comfort of seeing permanently wrought in stone 

 over its own door the name which has done the county so 

 much honor and credit at home and abroad. 



At present it finds accommodations in rented rooms in 

 a building far from fire-proof where it has stored away 

 portraits ' and manuscripts of inestimable value, and its 

 shelves fairly groan with the weight of its library accum- 

 ulations, yet no citizen of the city or county has been 

 prompted to perpetuate his name by securing for this 

 worthy society a permanent habitation suited to its rapidly 

 increasing needs. 



In fifty years the society has attained more than its 

 most sanguine friends could have hoped for. May it not 

 be many years before successful efforts shall be made to 

 secure a solid and fire-proof structure over whose portal 

 the name of the Essex Institute shall be wrought in en- 

 during stone, as a memorial of the past, and an inspiration 

 for the days to come I 



