AXNL'Al. MEETING AT NEVADA. 191 



beautiful land. Let no cunningly devised fables draw you nor your 

 children away from the land of the hill and the tree. Go not forth to 

 the lands that are bare ; for behold the grasshopper is there, and the 

 simoon doth waste, and whether thou be in solitude upon thy ranch, or 

 whether thou be in the city, the cyclone or the tornado may destroy 

 both thee and thy neighbor in the twinkling of an eye. 



When thou shalt behold the illustrated pamphlet of the Flea-bite 

 Town Company be not bewildered. When thine ear shall hear of rail- 

 road lands at half price, on long time at small per cent be thou like the 

 deaf adder that cannot be charrned, though the charmer be never so 

 wise. Still abide. Then shalt thou have something to give to the rag- 

 ged refugee when he driveth to your door with his tottering team and 

 his hungry children. 



THE STORY OF THE LEAVES 



Is one of hope ; nay. of assurance. Progress, real progress, is the order 

 of tHe universe, at least it is so upon our planet. 



Compare the few rude fossils and imprints of the vegetation of 

 that time, left among the lower coal measures with the forms that are 

 growing to-day upon the earth. Ask the rocks and they will tell you 

 that as the periods have taken their places in the past eternity, the gra- 

 dations of animal life have risen higher at every change. The mon- 

 sters are going out, and animals better suited for man's purposes are 

 being improved by him to meet new requirements. Call all this devel- 

 opment or evolution if you will. I choose to believe in a continued, 

 continual, progressive creation. 



The breech-loading rifle is fast finishing up the work of relieving 

 the world of its dangerous and useless animals. Our buffaloes have 

 gone. Our grizzly bear and the tiger of the jungles of India have ceased 

 to be a terror to the man of nerve, who has in his hand the best modern 

 gun. The wild elephant, the lion and the rhinoceros are nearing the 

 close of their allotted stage ; and men will learn in due time to exter- 

 minate the monsters and the cumberers of the seas. These must all 

 give way. 



The insects, more afflictive than all the larger animals, will finally 

 pass under the control of man, aided by the microscope and the discov- 

 eries made, and to be made in that boundless field of entomologic 

 science whereon now the daylight but dawns. 



Long ago the feudal system went away forever. A few months ago, 

 in Brazil, the hand of a woman with a pen mightier than a sword, de- 



