ese days will be one of
unalloyed pleasure; and so that, when in the years to come we tell
over to our children of the return to the old home, this reunion
will live in our memories as one that, like the old sun-dial,
'marked only the hours which shine.'

"No place so fitting for this home-coming could have been selected
as this beautiful park, where the springing grass, transparent
lake, and magnificent grove--'God's first temple'--seem all to join
in welcoming your return. How, from a mere hamlet, a splendid city
has sprung into being during the years of your absence! No longer
a frontier village, off the great highway of travel, with the mail
reaching it semi-weekly by stage-coach or upon horseback,--as our
fathers and possibly some who now hear me may have known it,--it
is now 'no mean city.' Its past is an inspiration; its future
bright with promise. It is in very truth a delightful dwelling-place
for mortals, and possibly not an unfit abiding-place for saints.
Whoever has walked these streets, known kinship with this people, called
this his home--wherever upon this old earth he may since have
wandered--has in his better moments felt an unconquerable yearning
that no distance or lapse of time could dispel, to retrace his
footsteps and stand once more within the sacred precincts of his
early home. Truly has it been said: 'No man can ever get wholly
away from his ancestors.' Once a Bloomingtonian, and no art of
the enchanter can dissolve the spell. 'Once in grace, always in
grace,' whatever else may betide! Eulogy is exhausted when I
say that this city is worthy to be the seat of justice of the grand
old county of which it is a part.

"Upon occasion such as this, the spirit of the past comes over
us with its mystic power. The years roll back, and splendid farms,
stately homes, magnificent churches, and the marvellous appliances
of modern life are for the moment lost to view. The blooming
prairie, the log cabin nestling near the border-line of grove or
forest, the old water-mill, the cross-roads store, the flintlock
rifle, the mould-board plough, the dinner-horn,--with notes sweeter
than lute or harp ever knew,--are once more in visible presence.
At such an hour little stretch of the imagination is needed to
recall from the shadows forms long since vanished. And what
time more fitting can ever come in which to speak of those who have
gone before,--of the early settlers of this good county?

"It was fr