98 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



bows its head to his fierce onrush; far out on the broad beautiful 

 savannas of the Northland where the rustling blades of growing 

 corn and the swaying heads of ripening golden wheat form the 

 music and the summer wind singing among the trees swells the 

 chorus; in the mighty stretches of low-lying land in the Southeast 

 where for untold ages the forces of nature have been steadily at 

 work preparing a soil inexhaustible in its richness and only need- 

 ing the hand of competent, educated men to transform it into a 

 veritable Cave of Aladdin. All these elements are being gathered 

 together, and the result is told in one grand triumphant anthem 

 of progress, prosperity and achievement. 



We all love our State. We recognize that each part of it has 

 claims that deserve recognition and that no one portion has the 

 right to assume superiority over another, but I have sometimes 

 thought that residents of portions of the State rather "put on airs" 

 and assumed that theirs was the only really important section. I 

 have decided (since I have the solemn pledge of the presiding officer 

 that I will be protected from personal violence, or, in other words, 

 that I will not "get the hook") to repeat a little poem. The words 

 to which I invite you to listen show that we of Southwest Missouri, 

 have not only a splendid fertile country, diversified, prosperous and 

 happy, but we have in addition something that leads away from the 

 sordid affairs of life, enables us to relax a little and allow our 

 minds to assimilate some of the beauties of nature. It lets the 

 imagination have play so that the normal balance may be main- 

 tained, out of which conditions alone, a mingling of the practical 

 and the ideal, can be evolved the highest type of manhood and 

 womanhood. 



Oh, the mystical river, its surface aquiver, 



With lights and dark shadows which gladden the eye ; 



And the soft summer breeze, moaning down through the trees, 



Seems to rhyme with the notes of the whippoorwill's cry. 



And the damp, heavy air has a fragrance as rare, 

 As if bathed in th§ odors of tropical wine ; 

 While the soft ebb and flow of the waters below 

 Fills the broad fertile valley with music Divine. 



So I lie there and dream, on the banks of the stream. 

 As the waters go murmuring, whispering by ; 

 And the sycamore tree casts a spell over me, 

 With its gray mottled trunk and its crest in the sky. 



And each rocky shelf seems the home of an elf. 

 That watches the river with vigilant care ; 

 And the old blasted pine, with its garland of vine, 

 Seems a sentinel placed by Omnipotence there. 



