FOURTH DISTRICT AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 275 



To raise a stone weighing two hundred pounds five feet is a task 

 beyond his strength. Would he raise half a ton fifty feet he must 

 call to his aid an engine and half a, dozen other men, and then, with 

 elaborate contrivance of derrick and block and tackle and ropes and 

 pulleys he succeeds by painful labor in lifting it to its place at the 

 imminent risk of being crushed by his own machinery. And yet, 

 small as man is, he is born to tlie ])urplo. He shows this even in his 

 infancy. See that babe! What an imperious little despot it is, as 

 though it "bore upon its baby brow the round and top of sover- 

 eignty." From the first it royally appropriates all that is best on 

 earth of love and sacrifice and service. Woe to the luckless wight 

 who rebels against the young autocrat of the nursery! He lays staid 

 matrons and dignified men under tribute to furnish him amusement, 

 and makes age itself wear the cap and bells of a jester in his mimic 

 court. By the time he is a year old this young lordling of creation 

 deliberately seeks to subjugate his father and mother, and succeeds 

 oftener than he ought in "bossing the ranch." He feels already stir- 

 ring within him that regal spirit that belongs to creation's anointed 

 sovereign and lord. One by one the cat, the dog, the horse, the soil, 

 the sea, steam, electricity — all the forces of nature shall wear his 

 livery and do his bidding. Prince that he is, he is practicing in the 

 nursery the arts and airs of government. 



Man received his commission, his letters-patent as viceroy of nature 

 at creation, but he is. only just coming into his kingdom now. " God 

 gave the earth to the children of men," as he gave Canaan to Israel. 

 He deeded the land to them, but they had to conquer it. And, as 

 that ancient people were six hundred years conquering and subduing 

 their inheritance, because their vices and their ignorance so weakened 

 and enervated them, so man has been nearly six thousand years 

 achieving the conquest of nature, and learning to wield the scepter 

 God has placed in his hand. In fact, he has not subdued it yet — the 

 subjugation of the material world has only just begun. Nature is 

 exceedingly opulent in her forces and resources, but man has gained 

 but an imperfect mastery over them. He has been too idle to learn her 

 secrets, too much enfeebled in mind and body by his vices to assert his 

 sovereignty, and too much occupied with war and bloodshed to culti- 

 vate the arts of peace. He has abdicated his throne, and sold his 

 birthright for a mess of pottage. Just in proportion as Christianity 

 has put down the vices of man and taught himself government, has 

 he in his turn subjugated the forces and elements about him. And 

 yet he has only taken the outposts and frontiers of his domain, and 

 there remaineth much land to be possessed. He has only entered 

 the vestibule of the sanctuary of Nature. Her innermost vails have 

 not yet been lifted. The forces he has subdued are only partially 

 tamed, only imperfectly broken to harness. His best steam-engine 

 wastes eighty-five per cent of the power of the steam, and his most 

 perfect mechanical contrivance loses by friction one half of the 

 power applied. Who can doubt that the next fifty years will witness 

 far greater triumphs of mechanical and inventive skill than the last 

 fifty have seen. These wonders are but a prophecy, and a hint of 

 the solution of Nature's ultimate secrets and the utilization of her 

 forces which are in store for mankind. As the dreams of the past are 

 the actualities of the present, so the achievements of the future will 

 surpass our wildest flights of imagination. Forty-two years ago Pro- 

 fessor Low, of St. Joseph College, Bardstown, Kentucky, was com- 



