194 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



that was to be so near. I have said now about all that is incumbent upon 

 me to say, but I cannot leave this stage without one other remark, as 

 stand here in sight of old Sutter's fort, and it is a thought which inspires 

 me to speak and you to listen, and it is enough to say about the men who 

 broke down the barriers of this savagery and made possible this wonderful 

 development, so you might this night — and your sons — wave for a moment 

 the magic wand of memory athwart the magic mirrors of the unbroken 

 brow of the past, and pause for a moment amid all the rushing of the 

 present, and listen for a moment to the chiming of your memory bells, and 

 you will see before you a land as fair as the garden of the Lord, illimitable 

 in all the elements of a future empire, under no dominion of savagery; 

 but we shall have a people that will make the desert smooth, who shall sow 

 the waste with grain, who shall make of the desert a garden that shall 

 bloom like the garden of Hesperides, and from the rock-bound East to the 

 shores of the mighty West, from the everglades of the sunny South, and, 

 aye, over the cloud-capped Sierras like a rushing wind shall come the 

 response which shall yield to law of labor, and in that word there is no 

 magic. 



And now, after the lapse of thirty years you look back and you see this 

 wilderness that was so vast in extent covered up with a people that come 

 here to make a grand civilization. Where you heard the powwow of the 

 Indian, now stands the school house; where nothing but a savagery in a 

 remote time in the world, there now rises church spires, and crosses, and 

 intelligence, civilization, peace, plenty, prosperity, are all around. Labor 

 is king and loyalty is crown. Thus, under the stars as we stand here, 

 there is an absolute fulfillment of the prophecy of the old Quaker poet 

 who wrote forty years ago: " So shall the hardy pioneer go joyfully on his 

 way and wed the Penobscot waters to San Francisco Bay, to make the 

 desert place smooth and see a place that man bears with liberty and law, 

 the Bible in his hand. The mighty West shall bless the East, and sea 

 shall answer sea, and mountain unto mountain call, praise God, for all are 

 free." [Applause.] 



