234 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



I regret my own inability to do my subject and my 

 audience justice, but you must take the will for the deed. 

 Before I close, I have a few words which I earnestly wish 

 I had sufficient power of eloquence to indelibly impress 

 upon the mind of every youth in America. I earnestly 

 wish that I could rouse up in your minds, the same de- 

 gree of pride that now fills my bosom. No one would 

 believe me, if I should assert that I do not feel proud of 

 the honor this day conferred upon me. And why? Young 

 man ! you, the humble hard toiling son of a farmer, who 

 feel, as you hear or read the effusions of eloquence and 

 knowledge, and what you suppose to be long sought and 

 hard gained learning, which you think is far beyond 

 your means of acquiring, listen to me for one moment. 

 Do you feel that you would be proud too, to occupy my 

 present condition ? Does your heart ever yearn after the 

 means of acquiring that knowledge, which you deem en- 

 tirely beyond your reach, and which you believe would 

 tend to elevate your character and standing in society? 



I do assure you, it is all within your own reach. No 

 one of you were born in more humble circumstances, or 

 spent or are spending a youth of harder toil, than I, an 

 orphan-boy ; and all the advantages that I ever possessed, 

 are within the reach of every one. Bow down your mind 

 to the determination to acquire sufficient knowledge to 

 make yourselves useful members of society, and with the 

 exception of only a few months of a common country 

 school, your own firesides afford you all the facilities that 

 I have had. 



Oh, how much prouder should I feel, if at some future 

 day, I might be able to listen to the eloquence of some 

 one of the present youths of this Society, who had ac- 

 quired the power to rivet the attention of such a respect- 

 able audience as have honored me with their attention 

 this day, by the same unaided exertion of his own mind, 

 and particularly if I should hear him say that he was in- 

 duced to make that exertion by what I have here said to 

 him, and that it had been the means of raising him to 



