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25.

among country people will resist the influence of city example.
There is, in this matter, a positive discordance between the proprieties
of town and country. There is conclusive evidence that the
"hard times," so often unjustly complained of, is this year not wholly
ammyth; the operations of the "Sandy Spring Saving Institution"
serve to show the correctness of the complaint. The amount received
from depositers in the present year is only $9715, being $6300 less
than the preceding. The amount invested is $21,409.94, which must
be regarded as a decided indication of a properous and useful
institution.

Among the most interesting phenomena of the year whose events
have passed into history, so far as our acquayntance extends - a
pleasant gale, if we may term it so, which reached our neighborhood
in the autumn, and blew for a time with much impetuosity, nor has
it ceased yet to agitate the throbbing belles. I refer, of course,
to the "Marriage gale," - whole results (as thus far ascertained)
may be summed up in the actual solemnization of three weddings,
very near together, so beautiful that none more beautiful have
ever been recorded in these pages. The recollection of such events
is pecularily pleasant, even in withered blosoms. Thanksgiving DAy
of 1870, how inexpressibly bright and sweet and balmy! And yet there
was another side to the picture; for the influence of these
exciting events served to deminish the interest felt in opening the
lecture course of the Lyceum. And being strongly impressed with the
conviction that literary culture and the mental activity therby
promoted are immediately connected with keeping, in a worthy and
respectable manner, the exercises for which this hall was built,
the least indication of a want of interest in them seems to me a
subject for regret. Looking back, however, over the whole winter's