Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 6.djvu/149

 THE

��GRANITE MONTHLY,

A NEW HAMPSHIRE MAGAZINE

Devoted to Literature, Biography, History, and State Progress.

��Vol. VI.

��FEBRUARY, 1883.

��Xo. o.

��JOSEPH CILLEY BUR LEY.

��Agriculture is the most important industry in every country — it is the very foundation of national wealth. Nature has kindly ordered that this, the chief work of man, should be the best for improving his physical powers. The earth affords a bounteous harvest to the industrious farmer ; but the climate of the temperate zone does not admit of idleness of mind or body. With a robust frame the tiller of our New England soil has inherited from former generations a vigorous intellect which his occupation does not impair. Com- mon sense, sound judgment, and good morals, qualities carefully cultivated through two centuries and a half in the atmosphere of New England freedom, are the gifts inherited from stalwart yeoman ancestry of the greatest value to the present generation. This com- bination of mind and body has not only produced from our hillside farms such men as Cass, Pierce, Chase, Woodbury, Webster, but has sent over the whole country an aggressive army of men who are rapidly bringing even- state in the union into the New England fold, assimilating the immense throng of foreigners annually seeking a haven on our shores and boundless prairies, and giving its distinctive character to the United States.

New Hampshire, one of the original thirteen, cramped for space between the ocean and the Connecticut, has not maintained the relative rank, held among her sister states during the last

��century, by increase of wealth and population at home : but her influence upon the whole land, exerted by the migration of her children, is far-reaching and powerful. In the sense that her sons are good men and true, New Hampshire well deserves the compli- ment of being *'a good state to emi- grate from."

Among the little republics which make up our commonwealth, the town of Epping takes high rank, from its natural advantages and the character of its people. Originally a part of Exeter, which was settled by religious enthusiasts, who sought in the wilder- ness freedom of conscience and speech denied them elsewhere, it was occupi- ed by liberty-loving and God-fearing inhabitants. Incoqiorated in 1741 (Feb. 12), the township contains about twenty square miles of well watered and generally fertile soil. Among its sons who achieved distinction in the past, were William Plumer, William Plumer, jr., Henry Dearborn, and John Chandler, in the early part of this century ; and many others in more re- cent times.

Many men have left the ancestral home and sought and obtained dis- tinguished success in other pursuits and distant states, and many have clung to the scenes of their childhood and youth, and by their innate force of character have wrested success from the most unpromising of material, have coined money from our deserted farms

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