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aside by age and infirmity, he was one of the most efficient laymen of the church with which he was connected.

And now that this faithful public servant, and devoted friend of this Society has passed away, let us each endeavor, to the best of our ability, to carry forward the great work to which the last thirty years of his life were dedicated; to emulate his example in his rigid adherence to the objects for which the Society was organized; in his conciliatory bearing toward those with whom he was compelled to differ, and in the cheerfulness with which he laid aside his own preferences when the good of the Society might thereby be promoted.

That this Society may, hereafter, number among those who shall fill the chair he vacated, men of more profound intellect, of higher culture, and greater attainments in science, is quite possible; that it may have one better fitted for the work to be done, and the time of doing it, is quite impossible. To use the language of one who knew him well, through very many years of his life, and in all the phases of that life, "He was the State's best servant. Never man served the people to higher result of value, and received so little for it."

Among the many articles that appeared in the home and foreign journals, when Col. Johnson's death was announced, some were both discriminating and appreciative; none more so than one from the pen of the writer just referred to, and with a quotation from him this paper may appropriately close. He says:

"I knew him well, and greatly admired his possession of so many qualities for that office, which rarely blend in one person. Something of a scholar, quite a lawyer, with experience as a statesman; a thorough farmer, with great opportunities of foreign travel, for in his first journeys in Europe he shunned (ex necessitate) all of his own rank in life and learned the truth of the cottager's life, while in his subsequent journeys he went accredited, and was on a footing with the best of culture and the highest in rank. Brusque, and yet winning and attracting friends; sedate, yet with it fond of good talking and social life; all this, wonderfully blended, made him, I think, the foremost agricultural official in the world! When in England, he led our delegation, and in his custody our department was visited by the royal family. In that series of visits, the mornings being exclusively for them, his conversations with the Queen and Prince Albert were familiar, though always well bred, to an intimacy such as probably no other American gentleman has ever held. How rich his conversation, of anecdote about all this; often repeated, it is true, but it was a bright cheval de bataille, ride he it never so often. He

96 ANNUAL REPORT OF STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY.

rejoiced in a good, noble hearted man, he suffered in the contact with meanness and narrowness. I knew how dearly he loved some men, and how he but just endured others. What has not agriculture become since he took the helm of the State Society? Labor has been revolutionized, machinery has become humanity. His work was greater than his fame. He labored for a broad field which confessed the harvest, but did not fully see the workman. Were I to speak of him as he grew into the mind and love of a few men, I should use eulogy some would say was overwrought. I therefore temper the praise, though I would gladly give full proof of its depth.

To the gentlemen of that great Society I leave their old Secretary, who for them lived and with them died. I leave him to their affection; to a nation's gratitude. The first debt that Society will pay, is paying now; the last will never be paid. But my own heart has a power of voice to itself, if it does not touch others, when it says: 'This man made the earth on which he dwelt a happier home for his fellow men, by his life.'"*

* "Sentinel."

MEMORIAL

OF

HERMAN TEN EYCK FOSTER.

PREPARED BY HON. A. B. CONGER, EX-PRESIDENT OF THE NEW YORK STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY

PRESENTED AT THE ANNUAL MEETING FEBRUary 9, 1870.

Our Society deplores the loss of one who, for many years, honored its confidence in varied official service. The social circle in which he moved, mourns a most generous and dearly esteemed friend, and the benevolent world an ardent and successful fellow laborer..

Herman Ten Eyck Foster died on the 9th day of February, 1869. His death was a surprise, even to those who witnessed it; without preparation to all, save himself.

An accident early on the morning of the 27th of January, which resulted in a fracture below the left kee, remanded him to his couch. The injury was not deemed serious; every symptom promised early convalescence. While his family were rejoicing in the indications of a complete restoration to useful and wonted labor, and as one of his children was reading from a recent publication, some witty thought produced a general merriment. His hearty laugh was quickly arrested by a sense of faintness. The reading ceased at his request, and his head was laid on the pillow. Consciousness was quite suspended, and as it returned he said to a daughter ministering to his relief, "I was almost gone." Instantly the blood surged over his riven heart; the cord which bound him in time was severed, and his spirit, released from earth, ascended to its eternal abode.

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He was born in the city of New York, on the 1st of March, 1822, the third son of Andrew Foster, a merchant of Scotch birth, and Anna Ten Eyck, an Albanian of Holland lineage.

At the age of fifteen he entered Columbia College, and in due course received his degree as bachelor of arts. Spending a winter in the trial of mercantile life, his tastes, and perhaps also a regard to his health, prompted him to the study of farming, which he pursued for a year at Jacksonville, Tompkins county, under the supervision of Mr. Aaron K. Owen.

His choice of a pursuit in life was soon and wisely determined, and Lakeland, an estate of nearly 250 acres on the east shore of Seneca lake, was purchased in June, 1843.

Two summers had passed, and when the landscape was clothed in the gorgeous tints of October, he brought to his house, to make it their home, Pauline, a daughter of Mr. Antoine Lentilhon, a French resident of New York city. Four and a half years passed, and a son and two daughters were born, the jewels which the mother wore to the delight of the doting husband and loving father. Then suddenly she was called to a higher home, of which that on earth was, in the ministries and grace of love, the type.

What was the weight of that affliction on his heart, it is not ours to reveal. We note only its traces in his life. The main current of his earthly affection, thus severed, was soon observed to join itself to its tributaries, and swelled his affection and care for his bereaved children. From the tutelage of grief he passed to an inward culture, which gave him hope in his patient waiting for a blessed reunion, took from death its accustomed horror, and led him to express a boding joy in the day of his release. Not that such expressions were frequent, but rather elicited at times of rarest confidence, or brought out in sympathy for some similar trial. Only was it possible for the nicest observer, and 'that on few occasions, to read in the depths of his fixed eye, the traces of that deeply felt and long borne sorrow; to understand how inwoven with his placid smile and almost gay urbanity, was that weird, yet staunch earnestness of feeling, which gave to his convictions of duty their true inspiration.

His near neighbors best attest his love for the highest good of their families, as they point to the Sabbath school which he originated, and sustained for nearly nineteen years. His assistants in his work, and his scholars, will not soon forget his labor of love in the prayer meeting on the eve of preparation, which, though recently established, evinced his intense yearning over their religious welfare.

Nor will those who shared his nearer confidence fail to be animated by the example of fortitude, which kept him tied to his work even in periods of exhaustion, or of that enthusiasm which, in the deep interest of his work, was oblivious of fatigue.

The sentiments of respect manifested in the last tribute to his remains, the irrepressible emotion, the quiet utterances which spoke his loss and his worth, are the enduring evidence that his genial nature, expressing itself in words and works of kindness and just regard for the welfare of all of human mould, had fully wrought out its mission, and that in his life's journey, he has left

"Footprints in the sands of time.
"Footprints that perhaps another,

Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing shall take heart again."

For such a spirit, farming was not simply a business or the occupation of time. It was communion with nature in her marvelous work, not merely a matter of study or inquisitive search into her hidden mysteries; it was a love for her display in the leafy garniture of her forests, in the heaving bosom of her lakes, in the rippling courses of her rivulets, in the rounding of her hill sides, in the craggy summits of her mountains, not less than in her verdant meadows, or her ripening grain. Hence, his pursuit after her rewards in the labors of the field, or the handiwork of the garden, was ever fresh and joyous. It was less of a task than a pastime. Happiness and hope were, as they should be, its moving forces. The methods, however, were those which experience and science had approved, whether in the wise adjustment of means to ends, in the provident adaptation of every work to its season, or in the plans and purpose of a steady progress. The proof is in the result. Without any lavish expenditure; without fretting out or vexing his noble nature on unforeseen contingencies or petty mishaps; with every enjoyment of life, in the rearing of his children, in unbounded hospitality to his friends; with time freely spent in works of benevolence, and not a little spared to his official duty in advancing the cause of agriculture-his farm had, under his wise and happy management, more then trebled its original power of production and quadrupled its value.

We note as commendatory evidence of his success in the management of Lakeland, that, as early as 1848, he received at the hands of our State and of his county society, the first of the several prizes offered for farms systematically and profitably cultivated.

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