* * * * * GREAT CHANGES IN AGRICULTURE, MANUFACTURES, TRAVEL AND IMPROVEMENTS OF EVERY KIND. We of the third generation of the first four families and our contemporaries in the lower neighborhood, have passed through a period of time in which greater improvements have been made in our country than ever has been made within such a space of time in any country. Its equal, probably, will never again occur; yet we know not to what state of improvement men will arrive. The arts and sciences have been stretched far beyond their former bounds, and gigantic and minor productions have been brought to view by the labor and ingenuity our countrymen have displayed, and great are the benefits mankind have derived from their labors. Some rulers of nations and great generals of ancient times have been highly honored for acts of murder and plunder to aggrandize themselves, who, instead of rendering benefits, were a nuisance in the world. Not so with our scientific men. They crave not the loud applause of the multitude, but their general welfare and their labors have created benefits far beyond what we can calculate, and all are more or less benefited from the results of their labors. We have been spectators of the great changes mentioned and have seen the time when the red men were yet among us, and were often refreshed and cheered by their white neighbors with something to eat and a drink of cider; and the time, when they disappeared and a great revolution commenced, and the effects of the war it created, the restoration of peace and the times when the constitutions of the several States, and of the United States, were, from time to time, formed and become established, and the effects of the laws which have from time to time been passed under those constitutions, and the great benefits which have resulted therefrom; also the career of our first and greatest statesmen, who exerted their powers for the good of their country. And here let us not forget that in the days of our boyhood we have seen the time in which the military forces of our country, under great sufferings and privations, nobly sustained their country's cause to obtain an independent government, and have been spectators of its achievement and the great results which have emanated therefrom; in respect to which I will here give a very faint view of what has transpired in relation to the improvements our countrymen have made during the time of our life's journey, to wit: We have seen the time of the commencement of the printing of newspapers in this part of our country after the war ended, and the rapid increase and vast extent to which that important business has arrived, whereby every citizen with small means can now have information of the acts of our legislatures and more than he can read of what continually transpires both in our own and other countries.