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respectfully suggest that hereafter our annual meeting be held

on the 22d day of July-the anniversary of General Cleave

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7.-Song-"The Good Old Days." Arion Quartette. Give me the good old days again,

When hearts were true and manners plain;
When boys were boys till fully grown,

And baby belles were never known;
When doctor's bills were light and few,
And lawyers had not much to do;
When honest toil was well repaid,

And theft had not become a trade.

Give me the good old days again,
When cider was not called champagne;
When round the fire, in wintry weather,
Dry jokes and nuts were cracked together;
When girls their lovers battled for,
With seeds from juicy apple's core;

While mam and dad looked on with glee,

Well pleased their merriment to see.

Give me the good old days again,

When only healthy meat was slain;

When flour was pure, and milk was sweet,

And sausages were fit to eat;

When children early went to bed,
And ate no sugar on their bread,
When lard was not turned into butter,

And tradesmen only truth could utter.

Give us the good old days again,

When women were not proud and vain;
When fashon did not sense outrun,

And tailors had no need to dun;

When wealthy parents were not fools,

And common sense was taught in schools;

When hearts were warm, and friends were true,

And Satan had not much to do!

8.-Life and Character of deceased Pioneers, by F. J. Dickman, Esq.

MR. PRESIDENT:

It was announced a short time ago through our local press that there would be addresses on this occasion by several of our oldest citizens. While I do not claim to have come down to you from a former generation, I am old enough to cherish the memory of our early settlers, and am, perhaps, coeval with many who have seen and talked with some of the pioneers of our county. Some of them died full of years, and we can almost catch the tones of their voice as

they recounted the trials and the raptures of their struggles with the rude forces of nature. To some of them the veil was uplifted before their eyes were closed in death, and they could behold, in a not far distant future, on the banks of our lake, a beautiful and flourishing city, the pride of our Western civilization, teeming with population, adorned with temples of religious worship, endowed with a noble system of schools, alive with the activities of a large and growing commerce, and of manufactures to which all the strong and manly arts pay tribute.

It is not our office, in the light of historic truth, to exalt to the statue of heroes all who carried the compass and chain, or plied the settler's ax in the forests of New Connecticut. But, during the first sixteen or seventeen years following the 22d of July, 1796, when the surveying party entered the mouth of the Cuyahoga from the lake, there came to the Western Reserve, and settled within the present limits of our county, a class of men whose characteristics we may well admire and commemorate. They did not leave their homes because they were there the victims of intolerance, and could not there follow the dictates of a tender and enlightened conscience. They came here to improve their material condition -to better their worldly fortunes. Like the rest of us, they had an eye to the main chance in life; but they richly earned and paid a hundred fold for all they received.

The land, the river and the lake acknowledged their authority, and surrendered to them their treasures only after the greatest patience, perseverance and hardship. He who makes the blade of grass to spring up where it would not grow before, becomes a benefactor of the race. While the earth yields her increase, the city and the town spring up, and with the accumulation of capital come the com forts and luxuries of life, and many of those appliances and institutions which minister to the general happiness and prosperity. And so it is, as we see the city arise where once was the primeval forest, our thoughts revert to the pioneers, who fell the trees; and till the soil, and seeking to exchange the products of their industry, start into being the village and the town, as the natural outgrowth of their own necessities. The backwoodsmen thus become the founders of our civilization, and, filled with the pride of ancestry, their names and achievements become our most cherished traditions.

It was not until the year 1800 that the right o' jurisdiction over the Reserve was relinquished to the Union by the State of Connecticut. Prior to such relinquishment, there had been no civil government existing or likely to exist in the district. It required, therefore, no ordinary resolution to give up the advantages of State and Federal protection, and incur the risk. of unrestrained lawlessness in a wild Western settlement. But we have no record of violated rights of person or of property

among the settlers. The same instinctive reverence for law, the same self reliance, patient endurance, industry and thrift, which made him a good citizen at home, characterized the settler when he became a sovereign and law unto himself in the wilderness of the Western Reserve. He was, however, only a type of those who followed his trail, to live under a State organization, and help build up the thriving and well ordered communities on the shores of the lake. As we look around us, and behold on all sides the evidences of unexampled progress, we see but the embodiment of the same ideas, habits and principles which governed the daily life of those for whose labors and virtues we would to-day express our gratitude and admiration.

In contemplating the life and character of our early settlers, their principles and motives of action, it will occur to you that the firmest guaranty of private honor and good faith in all our business transactions may be traced to the ordinance of 1787 for the government of the pioneers of the Northwest territory, and to the wisdom, sagacity and justice of its New England author, Nathan Dane of Massachusetts. In the multiform engagements of business you feel that you will be secure against any and all legislative action by which the obligation of your private contracts might be impaired. This safeguard peculiar to our American Constitutional law found its way into our Federal Constitution from the clause in that memor

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