STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 193 



Earth has no mineral strange, illimitable air no hidden wings, 

 Water no qualities in covert springs, 

 Season no mystery, and the stars no spell 

 Which the innermost soul might not compel. 



And here and now in our presence, by virtue of two devices, that which 

 the alchemist complained against is removed. It is possible for man to 

 carry on, it is possible for man to reach out into ages past, it is possible for 

 man to make all that is undeveloped into one continued symmetrical, per- 

 fect human life. These two devices are the figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 

 and the twenty-six letters of the alphabet. By virtue of the powers them- 

 selves, there are no human efforts so great, there are no acts of man so 

 magnetic, there are no inspirations so grand, there are no human develop- 

 ments that might not be carried down to the very last syllable of recorded 

 time. But there was such a thing as a primitive man. We can trace his 

 footprints as he lived upon the sands of time. He was covered with hair, 

 his finger-nails were first long and then became claws. His hair was mat- 

 ted over his eyes, which served to protect them from the assault of his 

 enemies and to keep the dust and dirt out of them. In daytime he wan- 

 dered the earth, and the only machine and all the implement he had was 

 a sharpened stick. At night he crawled among the rocks, doubled him- 

 self up like a bear or wolf, and slept. In the morning he walked out from 

 his cave, and he gathered snakes, toads, lizards, and ate them, because he 

 had not the capacity to control, nor the power to capture any animal 

 higher in the scale of animal existence. And yet within the brain of that 

 primitive man there existed potential energies of everything that we see 

 before us here, and everything that the human family has ever accom- 

 plished since. As the acorn contains within itself the potential energies of 

 the oak that shall stand the tempest and rage of centuries, so within the 

 indurate and brutalized brain of that primitive man there existed the 

 potential energies to develop everything that has been discovered, wrought 

 out, and perfected since. It is a majestic thought that all the progress, all 

 the energies, all the invention, all the power that man exercises at this day, 

 existed years, and thousands and thousands of years ago, in the brain of 

 a primitive man. And I say, if it were my duty to-night to follow that 

 line of argument, it would be pleasant to trace the progress of humanity 

 from the hair-covered, long-nailed, chattering, brutalized human being, 

 that existed in the remote ages, up to the highest and most perfect devel- 

 oped of humanity before us now. 



It would be a most marvelous thing to find out how this reasoning sen- 

 tient thing ever could exist a human, a potential thing that would develop 

 itself to this extent. I cannot do that. I am here for the purpose of making 

 a speech. I am here for the purpose and in behalf of the Directors of the 

 State Agricultural Society to welcome you all. Welcome to the feast of 

 reason and flow of soul, which you yourself have prepared and have pro- 

 vided, and have committed to their keeping. We may go farther down and 

 trace out the development of our own Golden State, of which we are so 

 excessively proud. I believe if I opened that subject a discussion would 

 be an apostrophe to the city in which this exhibition is held. I remember 

 almost the first words that I ever heard and have knowledge of, were the 

 city of Sacramento. There was a time, when all over the length and 

 breadth of our land the city of Sacramento was known, the name was 

 known, the people were known — the people who broke down the barriers 

 that walled in savagery and kept it from the gaze of civilization. But 

 there was no man that ever thought, or had reason to think, in those remote 

 days, of the position the State of California would take in the future, 

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