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��THE GRANITE MONTHLY,
��on a scale of the grandest dimen- sions."
Besides all this, Mr. LeBosquet adds : " He left a large mass of ma- terial for a second volume of the His- tory of New Hampshire ; Sketches more or less complete of deceased Lawyers, Physicians, Councillors, and Senators of New Hampshire ; extended tables of longevity and mortality ; ten bound volumes, duodecimo, of Me- moirs of more than two thousand graduates of Harvard College ; and two bound volumes of Memoirs of Graduates of Dartmouth College ; be- sides corrections and additions to al- most all his published works."
And even these are by no means all. It should be remembered, too, that when Mr. Farmer wrote and pub- lished his works, the labor of such writing and compilation was vastly different from what it is to-day. We travel now by graded roads, turnpikes, and railways, where the first settlers cut their paths through almost impen- etrable forests with axes and hatchets ; fording rivers, turning widely aside from lakes and impassable marshes, often more than doubling distances, with no companionship but savage beasts, savage men, and other deni- zens of the wild and unknown woods. So Mr. Farmer wrote History. And to gather and prepare his materials out of scanty or chaotic masses, often dateless, almost always withoat in- dexes of any value, statistics con- fused and contradictory, the whole re- quiring study and thought like learn- ing a new or a dead language ; with correspondence sometimes to, if not through, both the hemispheres, cheap postage as yet, and to some parts any established postage, unknown — such were some of the labors of his wondrous, but too short, life. Where he did not make he mended, and so superseded old methods as to almost deserve to be called the creator of Biography, Genealogy, and History. His Notes and Illustrations of Bel- knap's History of New Hampshire, says the excellent Dr. Bouton, are
��scarcely less valuable than the text itself. And certainly his Genealogical' Register of the First Settlers of New England is a monument of marvellous research and patient labor. His con- tributions to the collections of the Massachusetts and New Hampshire Historical Societies were very valuable as well as numerous. Of the latter society, he was one of the founders ; and member of the Publishing Com- mittee, and Corresponding Secretary from the year 1825 to the day of his death. He was also an honorary member of various literary and other important societies in the old world, as well as a correspondent of the most emiuent living historians, schol- ars, and antiquaries of the age.
If there be associations or organ- izations of "Working-Men," so called, who would exclude the like of John Farmer from membership, surely it is to be hoped their number is small and their membership not greater. For such do not yet know who are their truest and most valuable friends.
But writing was not all the work of Mr. Farmer. From sixteen to twenty- one, he was clerk in a country store. For some years he was an active part- ner in an extensive drug store. As a teacher of youth he excelled. For ten or eleven years it was his chief occupation. If it be true that " the poor we have always with us," so, no- less, the ignorant are ever an omni- presence. And of Mr. Farmer it might be said, he taught without ceas- ing. And he gave lessons as well by example as precept. He was a model of Temperance in all things. Intox- icating drinks were his aversion. To- bacco was his abomination. Not for such as he did Temperance Societies have to supplement the Church away down in the nineteenth Christian cen- tury.
Anti-Slavery, too, found in him an early, able, faithful, and fearless advo- cate and champion. " He was mem- ber and Corresponding Secretary of the New Hampshire Anti-Slavery So- ciety, and a man greatly beloved by
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