;addb,ess 



Deliveriid at the Castle Garden, on 0|)t3mng tlie 2'5th 

 Annual Fairof tho Americaii Institute. 



By the Hon. UkN'kv Mkios. 



Ladies and Gentlanen — At ihe request of iho ^'anagers of the 

 '-J5th Annual Fair of the Institute, I will endeavor to speak for 

 fiiem what I kuow to be their views and feelings in reference to 

 the establishment and illustrious progress of our beloved country 

 in all tlie u.^efsil and delightful arts ; for, as our Stato organized 

 fhe Institute to j)romote, by all honest and honorable ways and 

 means, agriculture ; ye«, fellow citizens ! that grandest art of all, 

 on which all else depend as their fuundatiou, strength, comfort, 

 nnd most pleasing in the sight of God — that comes first — next 

 commerce ! that rapid, cheap, Mr communication and exchange 

 can be made by the farmer with the maker of the plow, and the 

 maker of the club axe, the greatest work of art for such a world of 

 forests as when we first landed on this great continent shnded it 

 i'rom the light of the sun. Here were pre^entetl jobs for Hercu- 

 les ! American genius and strong arms, and the vision of a future 

 Kepublic animate<l their souls and untiring arms. The huge woods 

 once browsed on by herds of mammoth?, and whose mazes 

 Hoarked out by their enormous feet, made roads for the red men ; 

 these were all to be opened to the light of heaven, to prepare the 

 way for the white fac^s coming from the east ; or, as the Indians 

 said, they rise with the sun out of the eastern ocean. All this 

 work depended on the club-axe. We, of modern timc«, have 

 forgotten, and most of us never saw the poor axe of all antiquity ; 

 !t was called the pole-axe. Its head was thin, and its blade long 

 and narrow ; its aim very unsteady, and its blow light. Our 

 Yankee axe did more work in a day than the pole-axe could in 

 a week. This, and Ihousands of other ingenious and novel in- 



