MISCELLANEOUS ADDRESSES. 255 
door grocery. These are some of the attractions which tempt the 
country boy from the breezy upland and the teeming meadow, 
from the corn-husking and the winter’s colt-breaking, to a life, 
which, for the most part, ends in the deadening drudgery of the 
desk. Here, the successes are few, the failures many ; especially 
after a wheat corner. 
As women are angels without wings, and as their rights are 
hovering in the air at this present moment, both gallantry and 
discretion forbid them to be forgotten. Should the robust coun¬ 
try girl, in a fit of weakness, grow envious of the feeble fashion, 
flounce and flummery of the town, let her become reconciled to 
them, as the blacksmith was to'his wife’s scratching. When 
asked why he didn’t scratch back, he answered, “ It amuses her 
and does not hurt me.” 
To quote the words of a distinguished statesman, uttered at 
an agricultural fair in this state, “We find to-day that the princi¬ 
pal cause of the peril which threatens France is that when its cities 
fail, its country perishes. W'e see that Frenchmen despise the 
country; Englishmen love it; Americans tolerate the country, but 
don’t love it” 
These words were full of the fate of France. May they fore¬ 
shadow no ill for America. 
There is another phase of aggregated existence. It is the man¬ 
ufacturing. In this country, there is a school of politico-econom¬ 
ical thinkers, who look with more reverence at a brick smoke¬ 
stack than they do at a church steeple. Their ambition is to found 
manufacturing districts. 
When the little houses of the laborers are packed together like 
sardines in a box ; when the men are tired from the hammering; 
when the women are beet-red from the cooking; when the chil¬ 
dren are satisfactorily black from the dust and soot of the place, 
then these enterprising gentlemen subside to a blissful inactivity, 
especially if they own property in the neighborhood. In one 
respect their undertaking is good; it puts meat in many a hungry 
mouth. But, in my opinion, there might be a more beneficent 
power than theirs; to have the clutch of a giant and pluck the* 
humble dwellings where they stand, and strew them, as the sower 
does his grain, broadcast over the land, there to fructify forever. 
