392 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



quietly slipped up to the front door and with a skeleton key opened 

 it and started upstairs. When he got about halfway up a woman's 

 stentorian voice called out and said: "John, go back downstairs 

 and clean your feet! Coming home all times of the night with 

 muddy shoes, tracking up the carpet. I'm tired of it and ain't 

 going to have it." The robber turned around and slipped down- . 

 stairs and went out to where his partner was and said to him: 

 "I can't rob that house, it's too much like home," 



When I heard a voice from Missouri asking me to deliver an 

 address on this occasion, I couldn't refuse because it was too much 

 like home, for I am proud to confess to you tonight, that notwith- 

 standing my lot has been cast in another land and I am pleased 

 to say, among pleasant people and with pleasant surroundings, I am 

 like the old lady who, during the war, met a company of soldiers 

 and they asked her if she was Union. She said, "No." Then 

 they asked her if she was Confederate. She promptly answered, 

 "No." They then asked her what she was and she said: "I'm a 

 Baptist and have been all my life." I'm a Missourian and have 

 been all my life. 



For nearly twenty years the burden of my song has been, "The 

 Dairy Cow." She has been prominent in my thoughts by day and 

 in my dreams by night. I have had the pleasure of introducing 

 her on the cattle plains of the west and the coal fields and tanbark 

 districts of the east, in the wheatfields of the north and the cotton 

 fields of the sunny south. I have been permitted to chaperon her in 

 cattle conventions, associations of bankers, good roads assemblies, 

 farmers' institutes, grange meetings and women's clubs. I have 

 made her the subject of toasts at banquets where society worshipped 

 at the shrine of fashion, and I have admired her in her humble 

 home. 



I have sung her praises for what she has done and for her 

 fidelity in, the performance of her God-given mission. I have 

 extolled her virtues as the mother of her own family and the foster 

 mother of a large proportion of the human family. I have dis- 

 cussed her and presented her claims to distinguished audiences as 

 the queen of wealth producers, the world's best market for forage 

 and grain, the forerunner and foundation of prosperity, as a 

 refiner of thought and sentiment among men, a life-saver, a home 

 provider, a soil builder, a vote getter, a bank depositor, and the 

 one indispensable member of the animal kingdom. This, though, 

 is the first time I have attempted to introduce her to an intelligent 

 audience as a machine. 



