ask me to point you to greatness I do not direct your minds to
historic heights, but that you may win your share of greatness I close
this address by saying, wherever your lot in life be cast,

"In the name of God advancing,
Plow, sow and labor now;
Let there be when evening cometh,
Honest sweat upon thy brow.

Then will come the Master,
When work stops at set of sun,
Saying, as He pays the wages,
'Good and faithful one, well done.'"

II

A SEARCHLIGHT OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.

But a little more than a century ago, the old world laughed at the
new. Writers of the old world called our American eagle, "a paper
bird, brooding over a barren waste;" yet in what they then called a
barren waste, railroads now carry more of the products of the earth,
than all the railroads of all the lands, of all the peoples on the
face of the earth.

When New England people believed there would never be anything worth
having west of the Connecticut River, what if some seer had prophesied
that in nineteen hundred there would be a city on Manhattan Island
named New York that would rival London, two southwest, Baltimore and
Washington to equal Venice, Philadelphia to match Liverpool, Pittsburg
and Buffalo to surpass Birmingham, and beyond these a city called
Chicago, which in grit and growth would beat anything the old world
ever dreamt of; while on still farther west, would be a State named
Iowa, in which in nineteen hundred and fourteen, would be produced
enough cattle to beef England, enough potatoes to feed Ireland and
hogs to "beat the Jews."

What if he had continued; that in the libraries of the barren waste,
there would be ten million more books, than in the combined libraries
of Europe; that its college students would outnumber the college
students of England, France and Germany combined; that its wealth
would be great enough to purchase the empires of Russia and Turkey,
the kingdoms of Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Switzerland, with South
Africa and all her diamond mines thrown in, and then have enough left
to buy a dozen archipelagoes at twenty millions each, and still have
the wealth of the republic growing at the rate of five millions of
dollars every twenty-four hours. What a land in which to live! Think
of it; less than a century and a half ago, Liberty and England's
runaway daughter, Columbia, took each other "for better or for worse,
forever and for aye" and started down time's rugged s