Year: 1873

population OF Boston into the oQter sup-
burbs and the further country. Already
the further banks of the Hudson, Housa-
tonic, Connecticut and Merrimac are
dotted with evidence of this reaction
and in the inland tosns the same proofs
are being multiplied.


Another call also might be instanced.
1t is found in the desire of aged people
to escape from cities. Cities are places
for work. Ambition and youth love
them. These men plot, plan and execute.
In them strength loves to manifest itself
in arduous labors, and bold undertak-
ings. There hope of honor and wealth
finds its fruition, and while it remains
as the dominant impulse in mans
mind the man will cling to the noisy
street and the swarming markets. But
when the bodily powers have begun to
fail and the mind to weary of combina-
ton and labors; when visions of wealth
and honor have lost their power to entice,
and man begins to count the number OF
his probable remaining years and beholds
how few they are, then his thoughts turn
toward the country and his heart yearns
for the place of his birth. Youth is
vain and man ostentatious, but age re-
news the modesty and the simplicity of
earlier years. II have gained" said
man to me once, "a fair share of worldly
honor and my wealth is abundant, but
/ have reached that period of life at
which they do not seem so valuable as
they once did, nor do they satisfy, and l
am going back to the dear old spot where
/ was born to get some quiet and peace
before die, and be laid in the little
graveyard where my parents sleep, when
all is over"


l anticipate the action of these ten
denotes in nature and society with hap
py confidence. The curse Of poverty
will be removed from. agriculture and
the fields that are sterile and the damp
levels that lie undrained under the con-
troll of enterprise and wealth will be-
come fertile and fruitful. You cannot
develop great and complex industry,
requiring many agents and instruments
without the assistance of wealth. Mon.
ey is needed, and money is precisely the
one thing the average New England FAR
mer has lacked. He who is compelled
to invest only for immediate results can
not invest wisely. An interval must
elapse between the expenditure and the
return and this a poor man, with fam
lily to support and heavy taxes to pay
cannot afford The country cannot re-
deem itself. The cities must come to
the rescue, and in the persons of those
who in them have amassed wealth and
obtained wider knowledge of men and
things than secluded life can give, in
troduce and inaugurate such new meth
DDS and economies as will give to agri-
culture higher and more attractive
character and richer profits.


hold that it is nothing less than du
ty for every man who has been so pros
pered in mercantile or professional life
as to be able to assist in tnis undertak-
ing, to join those who are already active
in this direction. Every merchant in
the city of Boston, or in any city, who
was bora and bred in the country, owes
something to his native town. He should
give something back before he dies to
that place whence he derived the physi-
cal, mental and mental forces which
have won for him his success in life.
The spot of his nativity has sacred
claim upon him. He should become a
teacher and helper to every boy now
growing up in the place where he toiled
when boy. For what is wealth, for
what is art, for what culture, for what
all the appliances of civilization if not
to elevate the many and disseminate
with a liberal hand on all sides the pos
sibilities of wealth and the comforts that
wealth alone can supply. The finest
sentiment of Christianity is twin sister to
this practical benevolence, and the two
should fly forth over all the land like
companion angels, doubling the fertility
of every field over which their white
wings have passed.


We cannot afford, gentlemen, to allow
agriculture to pass into decadence.
When the farming class shall be consid-
cred as an inferior class we have revived
the disastrous distinctions of the middle
ages. 1t is because the New England
farmer has not been serf or peasant
that New England has become what she
is. doubt if republic could endure
in any country where agriculture is not
the prime industry. When wealth and
culture and civil honors have been d.
vorced from the soil of the country the
country itself will have sunk into lamen-
table debasement. For it cannot be de-