iety, appeared on the platform, and
the Judge introduced the lecturer in the following terms, as reported in
the local press:

"Mark Twain wrote that in his Oriental travels he visited the grave
of our common ancestor, Adam, and, as a filial mourner, he
copiously wept over it. To me the grave of our common ancestress,
Eve, would be more worthy of my filial affection, but, instead of
weeping over it, I should proudly rejoice by reason of her
irrepressible desire for knowledge. She boldly gratified this
desire, and thereby lifted Adam up from the indolent, browsing life
that he seemed disposed and content to pass in the 'Garden,' and
gave birth to that spirit of inquiry and investigation which is
developing and elevating their posterity to 'man's pride of
place'--'a little lower than the angels'--by keeping them ever
discontented with the _status quo_, and constantly pressing on to
the 'mark of their high calling' beneath the blazing legend
'Excelsior.' It is this ceaseless unrest of the spirit, one of the
greatest evidences of the soul's immortality, that is continually
contracting the boundaries of the unknown in geography and
astronomy, in physics and metaphysics, in all their varied
departments. Of those pre-eminently illustrating it in geography
were Jason and his Argonauts; Columbus, De Gama, and Magellan; De
Soto, Marquette, and La Salle; Cabot and Cook; Speke, Baker,
Livingstone, and Franklin; and our own Ledyard, Lewis, Clarke,
Kane, Hall, and Stanley. And this evening will appear before you
another of these irrepressible discontents who would know what is
still hidden, at any risk or privation.

"Impelled by this spirit of enterprise, in search of truth, Captain
Willard Glazier has discovered, at last, the true source of our
grand and peerless river, the 'Father of Waters,' down which he has
floated and paddled in frail canoes, a distance of more than three
thousand miles, to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico. One of these
canoes is now placed here in your view, and will be presented
to-night by its navigator to our Historical Society. Nearly two
hundred years ago La Salle discovered the mouth of the Mississippi,
yet only now in this year of grace, 1881, was ascertained its true
fountain source.

"This, the latest achievement of Captain