He was grateful, deeply grateful, to them all.

But on what subject of public interest could a public man speak, that would find harmony among an intelligent, thinking people?
There were such subjects, but he could not speak of them.
The people of Western New York had always been eminently just and generous to him, and had recently proved their kindness on various occasions, by inviting him to address the State Agricultural Society on agriculture.

But his life had been spent in the closet, in diplomacy, or in the cabinet; and he had not learned the practice, or even the theory of agriculture.
After what he had seen of the harvests of Western New York, bursting with food for the sustenance of man, for him to address the people of such a district on agriculture, would be as absurd as the vanity of the rhetorician who went to Carthage to instruct Hannibal in the art of war.
He had been solicited to address the young.

In his life time he had been an instructor of youth, and, strange as from his present display they might think it, he had instructed them in the art of eloquence.

And there was no more honorable office on earth than instructing the young.