We soon turn our war-horses out to pasture, in this country,' explained Montaigne." No man among his contemporaries in Massachusetts had a larger number of devoted friends than Adin Thayer.

Many people who were not counted among his acquaintances were attached to him by sympathy of political opinions and by gratitude for his important service to the Commonwealth.

He did a thousand things for the benefit of the city, for the benefit of the State.

Many bad men found that somehow their ambitions were nipped in the bud by a process they could hardly understand, and many good men were called into the public service in obedience to a summons from a hand the influence of which they never discovered.

But there were four things he largely helped to do which were important and conspicuous in our history; I will not say things that he did, but they were things which would not have been done, in my judgment, if the power and influence of Adin Thayer had been subtracted; things accomplished with difficulty and with doubt.