AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 49 



head, and over all oceans and never scald a finger, and never let him sink. 

 He will talk through tens of thousands of wires at Behring's straights with 

 all mankind ; he will, if he thinks best, clothe the world in silk ; he will 

 go through all the deserts of Africa and elsewhere with ice and cool cars ; 

 he will bring the spring watei's by artesian wells from under the desert, 

 irrigate with them the burning sands, and make them a garment of grain 

 and fruit trees, and to '■'■blossom like the rose." He will, in his crystal 

 palaces of the frigid north, grow the fruits of the sunny south ; he will 

 make earth a garden, render climate itself an average of beauty, and use, 

 and health to himself; he will unlearn all the savage that is in him, and. 

 supply its place with all the loveliness of Christian life, illustrated by all 

 human art and knowledge. We feel assured of this, for history has taught 

 us that the progress of Christianity is constant from the day of Christ, and 

 always in close chained connection with all civilization, all knowledge, all 

 that is good in this world. Every pagan system must fall to pieces, being 

 made as tools of clay, but our salvation here and forever is through Him. 



Ladies and Gentlemen, we earnestly invite you to look carefully, 

 thoroughly, into all the things displayed before you ; if you will do that 

 you will often find occasion to admire an article which at the first look 

 seemed unworthy of a place in a palace ; but that is a frequent mistake, 

 and you will often say : " Well, indeed I did not see that, how curious it is." 

 Each exhibitor here supposes (at least) that his article is worthy and is new. 

 All that are admitted by the managers are new in some particular, and 

 many in highly important points. All deserve attention., ^-f hey are the 

 annual harvest of the work and genius of our republic. That harvest 

 which, of wheat only, has ever been the joy of the year to every human 

 being, is here extended to all the good things of nature and of art. God 

 has pleased to create every other living being with limits to the operation 

 of its body and instinct, but man, born utterly helpless in body, has a 

 mind, like the wonderful plates of the photographer, excessively suscepti- 

 ble of impression, but so wonderfully superior to even that physical miracle, 

 that millions of vivid images impressed upon it remain forever visible at 

 pleasure, coming before him like the scenes in the stereoscope by a touch 

 of the will. To him alone then of all living creatures progress belongs — 

 everlasting progress to the right minded — for whom religion exists and 

 immortality. Placed by his Maker upon the most^lovely orb of our part 

 of the heavens, an orb whose glorious appearance at a distance is enchant- 

 ing, a globe smooth as a polished hall of ivery, colored by its green fields 

 and its parti-colored oceans, some pale green, some dark green, some pale 

 blue, others splendid ultramarine, some almost purple, some yellow and 

 some white ; with each of its poles clothed with pure white snow, it looks 

 like the ivory globe painted in richest coloring, having white silver tips 

 at either end, the inequalities of its surface being small as dust on a 

 thirteen-inch globe, and its oceans no deeper than the thin coat of water 

 which would remain for a minute upon the surface of the thirteen-inch 



[Am. Inst.] 4 



