94 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



improved and so enlarged as to make, its in these directions, practically 

 a new University. 



All this has been accomplished, you must remember, and Missouri 

 should take pride in it for it is their University, in six and one-half 

 years, in spite of a bad fire that destroyed well nigh all the buildings 

 and equipments that had been accumulated. 



In spite of four years of the hardest times that ever afflicted the 

 people of this State and last but not least, in spite of very small appro- 

 priations from the 38th and 89th General Assemblies, if these two 

 Legislatures had done their duty by the University as faithfully as did 

 the 36th and 37th, the record of recent growth in the University as 

 great as it is, would have been far greater, but I am glad to tell you 

 that in spite of its enemies, and hinderances, and in spite of all its mis- 

 fortunes the University of your State stands today, for the amount of 

 its endowment in buildings and equipments, the foremost institution 

 of learning from the Mississippi river to the Sierra-Nevada Mountains. 

 I wish that I could give that statement to the sea of Japan again, but 

 California stops me on the crest of the mountains. 



I should tell you that the students come from all counties of the 

 State, and they come moreover from 38 states and territories of our 

 own land, and from four foreign countries. 



The reputation of your University is universal; it is well known 

 among all the people engaged in higher education ; well known from 

 the lakes to the gulf, and from ocean to ocean. But I should fall below 

 the institution, standing before an audience as intelligent as this one 

 should I talk about only one institution should that even be your own 

 State University. For what I have said I wish to make no sort of an 

 apology here or hereafter ; if I were representing a private institution 

 of my own 1 would not try to stand before a Horticultural Society of 

 this State or any other state ; if I were representing a college of some 

 denomination or order. Masonic or Odd Fellows or something of that 

 kind, I should be presuming upon your kindness to talk about that 

 institution, but this is the University of the State of Missouri and you 

 are Missourians, with the welcome addition of our friends from Kansas 

 and Iowa and a few other states, but the bulk of the audience consists 

 of Missourians, and this is the University of the State of Missouri. It 

 does not belong to me ; I have no more right in it than any one of the 

 three million six hundred thousand people that belong to this State; I 

 have just as much right as you have there and no more, so far as my 

 proprietary right is concerned, therefore, I shall not apologize for 

 standing before any Missouri audience, intelligent and interested in 



