The daily Minnesota pioneer. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1854-1855, 1854-12-25

lieve, on an occasion like this, for the speak
er to set forth in moving terms the unfeign-
ed diffidence with which he rises to address
the Chair but it would be so very absurd
for full-blOOded Yankee upon any occasion
and in any company, however unaccustomed,
to lay claim to anything Ike timidity or
bashfulness, that, with your permission, |
will omit that portion of the usual pro-
gramme.
L hasten to express my qualification and
pride, at being permitted, on such an occa-
sion, and before so goodly company, to
speak word in behalf of the Pine-Iree
State. l am not of the number of those
who, in their extreme liberality and nation
alism, love to prefer every other state to that
which gave them birth who, natives of
New-England, delight to tell of former
residence in South Carolina or Alabama,
and to hail from thence, or born in Ohio,
claim Kentucky birthright in their adj
miration of the "cIivalry" of others,
sinking their own manhood. No; am proud
to acknowledge myself a citizen of Maine,
no mean State. And, sir, at this hour, when
we meet, not merely as citizens of Minneso-
ia, but as once again belonging to that be-
loved New England which gave us birth, We
may surely be pardoned some feeling of
pride in the States which severally claim us
as their sons and daughters some express
sions, which, in any but a Yankee might be
deemed boastful.
My pride, sir, in my native State, springs
not from the fertility Of its soil, the mild.
ness of its climate, its mineral wealth, nor
yet it's unbounded agricultural resources.
No; the gifts which Nature has so bounti-
fully bestowed upon her sister States of the
South and West, have been grudgingly
doled out to her, and perhaps it is as well
for her, as it certainly is far better for the
States more favored which she has helped
to COLOMBO, that her rugged and compara-
lively sterile soil, and her inhospitable eli
mate, have compelled her inhabitants to put
forth every energy to secure comfortable
subsistence.
We need not go beyond the States next
adjoining us, to see the enervating effects of
a too bountiful bestOwment of natures
gifts. Where herds of swine, round and
plump enough to tempt Jew to ALLURE his
religion, run wild through the oak openings,
and to obtain supply Of corn it is only he
cessary to plant label in the spring, and to
climb the stalk for the ears in the fall, the
utmost aspirations Of the inhabitants are
satisfied by ''hog and hominy;" but where
even the necessaries of life can only be OBJ
tanned by hard work, the people grudgc not
the extra eXertion necessary to secure the
comforts and luxuries of life.
If the curious traveller through the rural
districts of Maine sees no apparently limit
less fields Of stately, waving corn, and gold
en- wheat extending as far as the eye can
reach, neither does he see the cabin of the
proprietor of such field, occupied by men
and women, children and pigs, as tenants in
common of its one or two rooms, nor does
he find cows and oxen. horses and sheep.
seeking under the lee of rail fence, shelter
from the winter wind that wildly sweeps
over the prairie; but instead the white cot
tage of the farmer with its accompanying
concourse of well filled barns, meets him at
every turn, while the red school house OH
almost every hillside, filled with, or surroun-
ded by a troop of noisy urchins, serves to
explain in measure how it is, that New
England after sending forth her yearly
swarm of lawyers, doctors and ministers,
farmers, mechanics and spectators, has al
ways still "a few more left of the same
sort"
And the ever present village church, with
it's heavenward pointing spirc, gives unmls-
taxable evidence that the dwellers in the land
do not forget, in their eagerness to gather
worldly gear, that there are higher interests
than those of the body or the pocket.
Under their hard necessity for toll, the
inhabitants of the Pine Tree State have, by
the habits of industry and thrift thus forced
upon them, brought under contribution to
them the whole world With cunning han
dcraft, they have put together the rock-ma-
pie from their lofty hills, thu towering pine
from their swamps, the pitch-pine from the
sunny South, iron from old England, and
hemp from Russia, and straightway the no
BILE ship glides from the stocks to her native
element, walking
g. the waters like thing Of e."
The white sails of her shipping stud every
sea, and the daring adventurer who reaches
port which a Bath or BiddefOrd, Pen
obscot or Quaddy keel has never ploughed,
may safely land and take possession in the
name of his sovereign, for there the foot OF
civilized man has never trod
1 fear that in this gloriication of my ma
tive State, am wcarying your patience, but
the remarks have made apply with equal
force, mutatis mutandis to the native States
of all of YOU The industry and energy, the
calculating shrewdness and keen foresight
which are said to characterize the New
Highlander, all sprung from the difficulties