130 AMNUAL. KEPUKT OF THii: Off. Doc. 



James 1*. Coburn, who is known favorably throughout the State, and 

 who will now deliver the address of welcome. 



ADDRESS OF WELCOME. 



By Col. jambs p. Coburn, Bellefonte, Pa. 



Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen of the State Board of Agri- 

 culture and Farmers' Normal Institute of Tennsjlvania: It is an 

 unexpected pleasure to meet you here to-day. I am not in training 

 as a speaker, but I know something about farming. I feel that you, 

 in coming here, appreciate fully the fact that the name of the lo- 

 cality is suggestive of its surroundings. 



Like Boston, known as the "Hub" in New England, so is Bellefonte, 

 Centre county, known as the "Hub" in Pennsylvania. You are here 

 to-day, gentlemen, within the influence of an institution in which 

 you are interested as well as every citizen in the Commonwealth, 

 in the fact that it is to-day and will be in the future the greatest 

 institution in the State. The work already done is being felt by our 

 people in every corner of this county and of this neighborhood and 

 of these surrounding counties. To-day we have 700 or more boys 

 in school who will go forth armed with knowledge calculated to 

 elevate your profession and mine; calculated to carry forward in an 

 advanced stage the scientific qualifications necessary to make a 

 country great, trained by great teachers schooled in their art and 

 appliances; teachers under the leadership of such a man as Atherton, 

 who is efficient from the ground floor up; teachers with knowledge 

 that brings the lightning from the skies and carries thought through 

 the air. 



These sciences and arts are being taught to your sons and your 

 daughters who come from all over the great and noble State to which 

 we belong. This work that is being carried forward, ray friends^ will 

 elevate everv man, woman and child within the influence of this in- 

 stitution and in this Commonwealth, not only in enabling them to 

 labor more intelligently through its educating and liberalizing in- 

 fluences, but by broadening and strengthening their minds through 

 the processes of scientific thought and scientific application. 



This work will go forward and the business that yon pursue to- 

 day will become as much a profession, and it is now among those 

 who are trained and disciplined in it, as that of the lawyer or the doc- 

 tor or the banker or the machinist, or any other man who has fol- 

 lowed a line of thought in one direction until he has got the plums 



