THE FIRST HALF CKNTURY OF THE INSTITUTE. 17 



one — hnt possessed of an absorbing and abiding chann 

 for eveiy child of Essex County. Tliat we have not 

 wholly succeeded is to say that we are human. That we 

 have not wholly failed is witnessed by no less than thirteen 

 historical and scientific societies of a local character, self- 

 sustained to-day in the various municipalities of the 

 county, working on our lines, and almost all of them 

 looking to the Institute as their fountain head. 



This is the goal for which the founders strove. It is 

 the science of e very-day life ; it is the tradition gathering 

 about these moss-grown roofs, these ancestral acres, these 

 familiar streets ; it is the home-bred heroisms, for which 

 they crave a thought. To the slight extent to which our 

 history and science impinge upon the history and science 

 of the world at large, they will be garnered for us out of 

 hand. But to the much greater extent to which our daily 

 lives are quickened by a knowledge of what is special to 

 our surroundings and common to no one else, — if we 

 would reap this harvest we must till it for ourselves. 



Conscious that no history was more inspiring to them, 

 no experience more edifying, than such as their ancestors 

 had here wrought out ; feeling that the heroisms of the 

 past should be kept in perpetual remembrance by the 

 creation of bodies like this, which should cherish the gath- 

 ered relics and reminders, should accumulate books and 

 autographs and pictures, and should publish records, and 

 observe anniversaries, all to the end that the children may 

 remember what the fathers did ; persuaded that in the study 

 of nature, whether animate or inanimate, the mind rises to 

 one of its grandest functions, — they decreed that, so far 

 as in them lay, no child of Essex County, prompted by a 

 longing to come in closer touch with the wonders and the 

 beauties flung broadcast al)out us, — with the scenes 

 enacted on our soil, — should fail of its desire. Aware 



ESSEX INST. BULLETIN, VOL. XXX 2 



