282                 HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY

tions for farm stock, farm products, and implements of husbandry,
is evidence that you are alive to that art of arts that feeds, clothes,
and sustains all humanity, and is the basis of the wealth of all peo-
ples, states and nations.
    You that have made an observation of these ample and well
appointed grounds can attest that those who till the soil and rear the
herds and flocks are up with the utilitarian spirit of the age. Had
the pioneers who “spied out the goodly land of Canaan,” chanced
upon such a spectacle as is here spread out before us, what a tale they
would have told of “the land of promise.” What a chapter old
father Moses would have written in that good old book. Thanks to
a higher civilization and a better cultivated humanity; we may boast
of our better agriculture, of our better herds and flocks, and of our
“land flowing with milk and honey,” of our grapes and our wine,
and invite the world to come up and enjoy the “fatness of the land”
without fear of armed hosts with banners and trumpeters with ram’s
horns encircling our cities.
    Nor have you failed to provide for those who almost worship
that noblest and most serviceable of domestic animals, the horse.
Here, on your park circle, in front of your ample amphitheater, you
exhibit that unequaled of all educated animals, in his speed, his
endurance, his obedience to the will and guidance of his master—his
docile temper and gentle deportment toward all who kindly treat and
care for him. Some very fastidious persons object to your trotting
track, because of the tendency of fast horses to call about them fast
men, or to incite fast impulses in our boys. You award prizes to
merit in every department of the entertainment, and we hope allow
no gambling pools nor booths. If there yet linger among us those
who seek a neighbor’s purse, through the jockeys’ art and the tricks
of the race track, we can but regret it and rebuke it by our severe
discountenance of a practice worthy only of the vicious and the
vulgar. To you, gentlemen, this community, this vast assemblage,
of whom you are the leading representative men, trust that our en-
tertainments shall be elevating and ennobling and as void of offense
as possible. How infinitely better are our modern fairs, time track
and trotting included, to the games, sports, gymnastic feats, wrestling,
boxing, and the gladiatorial feats of the Greeks and Romans. How
much above the bull fights, or encounters with wild beasts, by the
Spaniards. How much better than the race courses now so fearfully
in vogue among our very fastidious and puritanical eastern neighbors.
Our entertainments are yet far better than the gambling regattas,
and club boat races, now so ripe among the “fast young men of
eastern colleges and universities” pandered to by the populace, pro-
fessors, parents, and guardians, and lauded and lionized by the press.
You open up a beautiful, broad, blooming and inviting field in which
to satiate the ambition of our youth, and win them to the field where
the noblest of civic honors are won. The prizes and honors you
award to industry should fill the farmers’ clubs with reading, inquir-
ing young men, or should equally stimulate the mechanic to yet
nobler achievements of mind and muscle, and thin the ranks of the
idle and vicious who league in itinerant gambling coteries, called
baseball clubs, that have not one outlook of noble results. Let there
be no faltering among those who would enoble and elevate the race