AffllVERSARY ADDRESS 



BEFORE THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE, OF THE CITY OF NEW-YORK, AT 

 THE CRYSTAL PALACE, OCTOBER 25, 1855, DURING THE TWENTY- 

 SEVENTH ANNUAL FAIR. 



[By LuTHEB R. Mabsh, Esq., of New-York.] 



Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen — Let us felicitate our- 

 selves on this most cheerful occasion. This is festal ground, and 

 this the season when the horn of plenty bestrews the earth with 

 golden grain. The purple grapes hang thick under the shelter- 

 ing leaves. The orchards bend with their delicious fruitage. The 

 gardens display their manifold productions. Our barns protect 

 unwonted treasures. And these lovely days in which the forest 

 leaf takes its bright, autumnal tinge, are gracefully conducting 

 us into a winter, against which we are guarded, in the kindness 

 of Providence, by an extraordinary prodigality. In spring, we 

 would not dare to rejoice; we would only hope; but, at this 

 autumnal festival, when peace reigns within our borders, and 

 plenteousness fills our palaces, and the varied fruits of the earth 

 are ripened and secure, we would mingle thanksgiving with joy, 

 and charity with praise . 



It is, indeed, a fortunate season for our country. Never were 

 the labors of the husbandman rewarded with a more bountiful 

 harvest. The ground seems anxious to compensate us for the 

 meagre handsfull of the past year, with overfloAving bushels. 

 The coulter has cut its way through green-sward whicli never 

 knew the plough before. Large tracts of land have turned them- 

 selves, for the first time, up to the sun, to woo its genial rays. 

 Prairies, ignorant of culture, whose only labors were to raise 

 spontaneous vegetation, food for the annual fire that sweeps over 

 them with terrible devastation, have submitted themselves to 

 the dominion of the plough. The west is full of cereal treasures. 

 Pharaoh's lean kine last year were upon us, but this is a year of 

 fatness and plenty, 



[Am. Inst.] 8 



