THE AGE OF ELECTRICITY. 159 



De Caunioiit was above- all an arcluvolugist, and lie has liis place 

 inaiked among the leading fouudeis of the science, but the part he 

 took in developing scientific activity in the provinces is liable to sooner 

 pass from memory. Tbis is a tit occasion on which to pay tribute to 

 his achievements in intellectual propagation. 



It is not only in the scieutitic domain that you have an abundance of 

 local celebrities. You have already done justice to the most famous, 

 but there is still ample material from which to designate your streets and 

 public squares with names that redound to the glory of your country. 



II. 



You will not be surprised if a president who has crossed the Atlantic 

 and thereby been kept from discharging the duties that fell to him last 

 year at the Besan^'on congress, now feels desirous of explaining his 

 absence and of laying before you some reiuiniscences of the American 

 continent. The United States have come to be a fashionable topic. 

 They have been much talked of in newspapers and publications of all 

 kinds, in a rather unkind vein at first, we must confess, but public 

 opinion has since undergone a perceptible change. 



The visitors brought to that country by the Chicago Exposition 

 are unanimous in confessing their opinion that while the manners 

 there widely differ from ours, the Americans in the- North constitute a 

 great nation, whose influence will be more and more felt on the ancient 

 continent. 



Upon first landing in the United States one is not very favorably 

 impressed, possibly from the effects of prejudice. One sees tiiere rest- 

 less people who rush through the streets as through the halls of a bank, 

 with no other care than business; who do away with idle talk and 

 forms of politeness to save time, and whose only concern seems to be 

 about the number of dollars that the day will bring m. In that land 

 of freedom a high price appears to be set on everything, public office, 

 access to the bench, and the stewardship of city funds. The young go 

 into early training at snuill trades which enable them to '' make money" 

 whatever may be the circumstances of their fathers, and launch into 

 greater undertakings before their minds have gone through sufficient 

 intellectual preparation. The girls, who generally have better instruc- 

 tion, direct their own course iu the world, receive friends of either 

 sex, and being without the attraction of a dowry, depend upon their 

 personal gifts and charms to find husbands who have already been suc- 

 cessful in business, and whom they are to win for themselves. Outside 

 of cities, and not remote from the Eastern coast, where civilization has 

 longer existed, forests have been burned, either for the purpose of 

 leaching the ashes or simply for making a clearing at small expense, 

 thus absolutely spurning the wealth wasted in that manner. In 

 meadows or cultivated fields charred trunks or huge stumps stand here 

 and there as witnesses of wanton destruction, and have beeu left on 



