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rapidity that has at once surprised and rejoiced the most sanguine friends 
of our new and rising State. But yesterday, where now are beautiful 
and highly cultivated farms, was seen a boundless stretch of green and 
unbroken prairie, clad in the wildest and richest garniture of nature. 
Where but so recently the white man had never trod, now cities and vil¬ 
lages teem with happy throngs of contented inmates. Where but a few 
short years was an almost boundless extent of wilderness, known only as 
the wild haunts of beasts of prey and the untutored savage, now stretch 
out countless acres groaning under the precious burden of a well cul¬ 
tivated soil. Through the then trackless wilderness is laid the iron road, 
binding us in common bonds—over which is daily borne not only the 
rich productions of our virgin soil, but thousands rush to greet their 
once far distant, but now near friends, who have been left behind to 
prosecute the active business operations of life, or to seek other new and 
distant homes in the yet more distant West, which, before another 
twelve month, may teem with busy villages, and thriving and cultivated 
farms. Where to-day naught is heard but the solitary waterfall, the-* 
howling wolf, the screeching panther and the cackle of the wild fowl, in 
another year may be heard the merry whistle of the plowman, the hum 
of industry and the sound of the “church going bell !” 
This is emphatically an age of wonderful, nay startling improvements 
and advances in the development of all the arts, refinements and im¬ 
provements of life. The farmers of our country should be the last men 
in the world to be behind the times. Facilities for business of every 
kind, in its mode and application, are daily multiplying on every hand. 
But recently a long and weary year would have been consumed by 
the emigrant seeking a home in what then was deemed the far distant 
West, now a single week will suffice to transplant him among us, in hrs 
new home, and surround him with all his earthly possessions. Then 
months might be consumed in communicating and receiving the most 
important intelligence—now the most distant friend can communicate his 
thoughts to us on the wings of the lightning. Cultivated and enlarged 
genius, and a growing spirit of enterprise, have accomplished the great 
improvements of the day. 
At the very foundation of all our national and individual prosperity, 
lies our agricultural interests—and certainly, the agricultural should be.: 
