WINTER MEETING. 133 



in proportion as man is brought nearer to nature and God, in that 

 measure will mm be more and more inclined to a vegetable diet. I do 

 not for a moment doubt that man was created omniverous, the struc- 

 ture of his being, the shaping of his teeth and the entire conformation 

 of his body, all indicate this. He was made to be, if peradventure 

 fate so ordained, a carnivorous creature, yet, that this is not a neces- 

 sity we have abundant evidence. As man goes further and further 

 into frozen lands, he more and more feeds upon an animal diet, but 

 bring him down to a southern land, under genial skies, where the sun 

 forever shines, and the grats is always green, and where the tree of 

 life stands on the bank of the fair river yielding her fruit every month, 

 and more and more will he feed upon that pabulum which God per- 

 mitted him to take in the morning of time. And so, sir, this brings me, 

 DO doubt you will hope, to the very last thought, and that is that we 

 are situated sufficiently far from the inhospitable north, and sufficiently 

 near to the equator to rejoice in all that is best in either climate, and 

 possibly, sir, there is no part of the habitable earth, certainly not in 

 which we, as citizens of the United States rejoice, that is better cal- 

 -culated to develop the fruit-culture, than this locality to which we ex- 

 tend to you so hearty, so cordial, so sincere a welcome tonight. 



I am here, sir, not in a spirit of boasting, it would not become me 

 to go beyond the limitations of the truth. I am here, not as a land 

 agent or real estate man, who may sometimes be suspected of men- 

 dacity. We have very few real estate men here, and they are all strict 

 members of the church. I am not here to represent any landed cor- 

 poration or syndicate. I am here simply as a minister of the gospel, 

 and a citizen of Neosho, all of whom are bound to speak the truth, to 

 say that we have the very grandest locality with which God ever 

 favored humanity. Our soil will produce anything, absolutely any- 

 thing, from a petrified man* to a national question. But in the first 

 case if we undertake to do it, not for our own use and benefit, but for 

 our less fortunate neighbors. The truth is we do not like petrified 

 men, or women either. We want them wide awake and full of life* 

 Our soil is itself as genial as any upon which the sun shines. Even 

 these sterile hills around us, scaftered over so thickly with stones of 

 so suitable a size as that you would think that God intended them 

 especially for an Hibernian picnic — even these sterile hillsides will 

 produce the grape, and, in fact, all manner of fruit in such plenty and 

 of such quality, that you, sir, with all your wisdom and wealth of 

 knowledge of horticulture, will be amazed. We have land especially 

 adapted to grain-growing in our magnificent valleys, and we have just 

 as rich, just as generous soil as the great plain of Sharon, which has 



