Exhibition—Annual Addresses, 69 
tion of their greatness and in astonishment at their development. 
The sickle and the hand-rake were feeble instruments with which 
to build up a nation. The flail swung too leisurely and fell too 
lightly to summon the rocks into magnificent storehouses or to 
rise upon the seacoast or upon the plain. When the spring-time in¬ 
vited the farmer to his sowing he looked at his insignificant little 
sickle and inquired, how much can I reap with that? at his hand- 
rake and asked, how much can 1 garner with this? At his flail and 
pondered, how much can I thresh with this ? And when he had nec¬ 
essarily arrived at the conclusion that the product of his summer’s 
work would scarcely be more than enough for his own consump¬ 
tion, the carpenter put up his plane, the merchant locked the door 
of his store, the ship weighed anchor and sought more promising 
ports, the emigrant turned back and postponed his coming to an 
indefinite future, the rich minerals of the earth were promised 
another season of uselessness, and the log-hut was safe where ad¬ 
vanced agriculture has since erected the mansion. 
THE FARM OF THESE EARLY DAYS 
was as cheerless as the desert, and the life of the farmer a routine 
of unprofitable drudgery, scarcely more encouraging than the mono¬ 
tonous walk of the convict upon a tread-mill. Summer after sum¬ 
mer he wore himself out for a suit of homespun and enough to eat 
in the winter; he kept but little stock, neglected to keep as much 
as he might have kept, and what he had was scarcely an improve¬ 
ment on none. His children were driven by poverty from the 
school-house, if, indeed, they were within reach of one, and grew 
up in ignorance and with a fixed determination to learn nothing 
during their whole lives, even though they could just as well as 
not. Accordingly, that sort of enterprise which suggested the put¬ 
ting ot the grain in one end of the bag and a stone in the other to 
balance it, was devotedly adhered to and worshiped, and the result 
of all was that farming became more and more irksome and unin¬ 
viting, and poverty stalked over the farms and through the streets 
of the cities and villages. The country with its millions of acres of 
fertile land was scarcely better off than the owner of a fortune 
which is locked in a vault which the most persistent efforts of me¬ 
chanism can not open. But time worked a change; a wonderful 
change. Genius awoke from its stupid sleep and began to scatter 
