Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1882-12-13

for this sex sion of your annual congress Mi
waukee has only thanks and O cordial
| substantial welcome. The array of tai
ent and education, theoretical an
practical, comprised within your owl
ASSOCIATION. and the distinguished out
side speakers at your command and present
render it unnecessary, perhaps presumptuous
for me to occupy more than few moments o
YOUR time. The intrinsic and so obvious excel
lence of your work, equally precludes indul
gence in any extended laudation
panegyric. Having spent most of m,
life IN IN rather hard business, quite di
verse from yours, my only excus
for saying anything at all, beyond an expires
sion of the thanks and welcome of our people
is an ambition to have my name enrolled as al
honorary member of so respectable an organl
cation. A friendly hand has furnished mt
with your reports, containing an array
of statistics and an amount of infor
nation which convinces me that you
| already know more on these subjects than /
could learn, should devote to their study al
my probable leisure for the rest of my life. AS
1 am assured on the highest authority In the
| city that / am old, If not venerable, or pos
sessed of veneration, think it appropriate to
| commend you to date and refer you to docu-
ments with which the present generation, at
| least some of them, are not perfectly familiar.
Your calling is very ancient as well as hon
| orable one, dating with the earliest records OF
|
| many of us hold to be the embodiment of the
| highest wisdom in its inner and true meaning,
| uses history either real or in symbolism and
| fable, to convey its interesting lessons. 1t is
| to this outer covering or enVelop OF history
| invite your attention.: " When Adam delved
and Eve span, who was then the gentleman %
| Mankind was, even then, divided into two
classes-knaves and gentlemen-and the dis
tinction has never been obliterated, although
attempts have been unceasing to win over the
Jacks of clubs to the Kings Of hearts. The
results have ever been as fOreshadOwed III this
early dawn. The clubs and Gains have often
est prevailed. Abel was the gentleman then,
for he was a darymau, man of peace keeping
flOcks and herds. The other class was COM
posed of vagabonds, men Of violence and blood.
1t is a singu ar fact that men in all ages, who
have to do mostly with cattle, or other domes-
ticated animals, whether as individuals or
whole peoples, are proverbially peacesble,
gentlemen. Shepherds, herdsmen, are nearly
always men of peace. Those two brothers,
Abraham and Lot, illustrate this
idea. The cowboys" of those days.
l admit, had their :" little unpleasantnesses,"
as ours do now; and " the herdsmen of Abra-
ham and the herdsmen of Lot strove to-
gether," and drove these two brothers into a
family quarrel, which resulted in separation.
But the peace-loving Abraham did not say to
Lot, as the typical Yankee said to the Indian,
&c You may have the owl and [ viii take the
have the owl" but he said: " Is not the whole
land before thee? If thou wilt take
the left hand, then will go to the right, or if
thou depart to the right hand, then will go to
the left" There was no philosopher there to
say to Lot: Go West. young man y; and he,
being lover of urban life, went east, living
in the ''cities of the plain; while his brother
| took to 1.-THE hill country" and built himself a
| suburban villa of his own, on the
| plains of Mamre, and called it He
| bron. The one prospered beyond all
| precedent, and became the father of great
and grand people, while the other, persuaded
! thereto, doubtless, by his gay young daughters,
fell into all the social evils of voluptuous city
| life and soon became a financial wreck, losing
| all his possessions In great tire,-not as eX-
| tensive, perhaps but even more sweeping aud
| entirely destructive than that which visited
our modern Chicago few years since. We do
| not learn that be had dollar of insurance
either good or bad. In fact, the only thing of
value to him as dairyman, saved from the
wreck, was a quantity of salt,-trade mark,
r. W. A member of his family having refused
to pay duty in another form was the occasion
of his having even that. The record does not
show which of Lots COWS, if any,
was responsible for the calamity
1t was not, probably, quite as
fashionable then, as it is now, to everastingly
shift the blame for ones own acts onto some
body else. Perhaps the Ill success of that first
experiment, when Adam said: 1.-THE woman
Thou gavest me. ETC., " was not quite forgotten.
Following this ancient record, we find another
gentleman, Jacob by name. He was not quite
as supplemented and straightforward as his
good grandfather, but yet very successful as
business man. The extent of his operations in
the stock line may be inferred from the fact
that when he found it necessary to placate his
brother Esau, whom he had, more than once
numerically and outrageously cheated, he
sent, out of his multitudinOus fOcks and herds
nearly 600 of his best specimens as present or
peace offerings mere bagatelle IN comparison
with his immense drOves. He was all indus
trious and plOdding sort of man, and that tricky
old father-In-law of his, Laban, got the start of
him several times, He first palmed off his
unmarketable, half-sighted daughter Leah, on
him, IN place of the beautiful and accomplished
Rachel, as per contract. But Jacob resolutely
and patiently went to work again, under new
bargain, providing this time that he
should receive his pay IN ADVANCE served
another seven years for her. 1t is not to be
wondered at, considering what cute mother
he had, and the shreWdness and unscrupulOus-
ness of his father-in-law, that his inventive
genius should have been stimulated and devel-
Oped. Perhaps, too, the mother-in-law helped
to ''put up jobs " on him, as it is said they
sometimes stake hand" i'll such schemes.
But Jacob hit upon plan to get even with the
old gentleman and ''scoop him out" of
nearly all he had. His invention proved
''a grand success, and he grew richer and
richer. while Laban was correspondingly run
ming down IN his finances. I have no doubt
that Jacob, during the latter part of his twenty
| years service under Laban, used to ''whoop 'er
up with the boys ?" occasionally, but we do not
| learn that he ever took out patent on either
| his rods or his (w)hoops, as some Of our mod
| ern Jacobs do, to make his brother dairymen
| expense or trouble. He got his brother and
Laban in a tight place on several occasions, but
it is not recorded that be ever got tight himself
or ever pressed, suppressed or oppressed any.
| body with any patented press.
| Now this whole review, thus far, is in a sort
| of mythical period. The history in its esot
cries I have not the slightest doubt, has in
| struction, infinitely deeper, higher and more
| comprehensive, than any merely superficial
| glance would descry. On any proper occasion
it would be a pleasure to accompany you in {
search for the profounder lessons those seem
| ingly simple historic narratives contain. Blu
We leave them now and come to an era betooee1
/ the mythical and the clearer light of the presen
| day, apprehended by me as coeVal with the be
ginning of my own conscious existence.
Your business, dairymen, is not one will
which am entirely unacquainted. I had thu
| good fortune to be born in log cabin in thu
wilds of western New York, near Cleveland
| mean, of course, Grover Cleveland, ant
| at what was to me a very earl