TO Wisconsin- State Agricultural Society. 
its useful inventions over the farms; it brought the cradle into the 
harvest-field and the sickle was hung upon the tree and rusted al¬ 
most into forgetfulness; it set a revolving rake upon every farm, 
,and hade the farmer to rear stacks wherever before he had a cock 
of hay; it broke the flail over the cylinder of the threshing-ma¬ 
chine, which it placed in every barn, and with its buzzing charmed 
sluggishness into activity. Enterprise emerged from the log huts 
and walked over the the barren fields; it welcomed the fruits of in¬ 
ventive genius; it began to fertilize the exhausted ground; it looked 
about for means to improve the stock; it built barns where there 
were none, and houses where there were huts; it educated the boys 
and girls of the east and sent them out into this great west to de¬ 
velop its richness and contribute to the prosperity of the nations. 
The wild winds whistling through the forests and moaning over the 
prairies, and the howl of the wild beast mingling with the yell of 
the Indian, welcomed 
THESE ADVENTUROUS PIONEERS 
to their new homes. The sound of the woodman’s axe, hewing a 
pathway for the march of civilization, echoed among the trees and 
the far-off hills like peals of thunder in the silence of the midnight; 
the ground laughed with fertility, but the woods frowned and the 
silent sky wore a sadness from which the stars twinkled like tear¬ 
drops on the mourning cheek. None but brave hearts dared make 
a home amidst such solitude and the weird whisperings and scream¬ 
ing s of the winds. With the gun in one hand and the axe in the 
other, these early settlers reached the forest, and soon the smoke 
from the rude fire-place began to curl in the air and fill it with an 
incense of home; the prairie was touched by the plow and a sea of 
golden grain waved in the sunlight and cheered the heart of the 
world; villages began to dot the plains and grow rapidly to densely 
populated cities; the old east felt a thrilling current of health leap¬ 
ing from these harvest fields and coursing through her own heart; 
nature emptied the harvest so lavishly into the lap of the emigrant 
that he sat down in the midst of his burthened acres and mourned 
his inability to garner all that the earth would bring forth. Genius 
again come to his assistance. It drove the mowing-machine to his 
door and its clatter filled his soul with ecstac}^; it found him with 
the cradle in his hand and mounted him upon the reaper; it im- 
