AMERICAN INSTITUTE. ^ 529 



privilege of speaking in greater assemblages than this. It is a 

 question of personal privilege. It was my privilege to introduce 

 the grindstone question; it was yours to fix a time for its dis- 

 cussion ; but you have taken away that privilege and devoted the 

 time to other purposes, and here I am with an ax to grind and 

 nobody to turn. Besides, I have been poohed at for introducing 

 this subject, and the question has been rather sneeringly asked, 

 ''What can you say at all interesting about a grindstone?" 



Now, I came to-day prepared to let you know what I could 

 say, and yet the grindstone wouldn't go. I have not liad my say. 

 What shall I do 1 



Several voices — " Go on ! go on ! hear him ! hear him ! Let's 

 have a turn at the grindstone !" 



Mr. Robinson — Very well, then, I say this : The grindstone is 

 not such an unimportant subject of discussion by a farmers' club 

 as some persons, without reflection, may think. What could a 

 farmer do without it ? In fact, it is, instead of being unimportant, 

 the most important implement ever brought upon a farm. Show 

 me a farmer that does not own a grindstone, and I will prove to 

 you by a thousand witnesses, if any other is needed, out of his 

 own mouth, and upon his own farm, that lie is a poor, shiftless, 

 thriftless fellow. Pray, tell me what more pitiable thing, what 

 more derogatory to his character and ability to live like a man 

 among men, could you say of one who claims the name of 

 farmer as the justly proud prefix to his own cognomen, than to 

 say, "Poor fellow, he has got no grindstone 1" Some persor^ has 

 said that he could measure civilization by the quantity of soap 

 used. I can measure it by a better test — it is the grindstone test. 

 When I was an early settler, so early that I had no white neigh- 

 bors, in the north west county of Indiana, and no customers for 

 merchandise but the wild Potawatamie Indians, who were a very 

 dirty, uncivilized tribe, the last, you would think, ever to wash 

 themselves, I sold them a bar of soap, but never a grindstone. 

 At a later period I had a good many white customers, civilized 

 ones, as was proved by the fact that, while I was selling one box 

 of soap, I sold a whole wagon load of grindstones. These were 

 sharp customers; they bought the means to sharpen their axes, 

 [Am. Inst.] 34 



