368 THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



love for the soil. This is our natural taste, while the fascinations of 

 town life are artificial. They do not satisfy our deeper feelings. 

 Some one has said: "Religion is that fine sense of soul that brings 

 the individual into touch with Universal Purpose." I have walked 

 the streets of the finest cities in the world, but pavements and hotels 

 and business blocks never touched that spring in my being which gave 

 birth to such a sentiment. On the other hand, I have climbed the 

 rugged and picturesque sides of our great mountain ranges. I have 

 stood upon the summits of some of their lofty peaks and beheld the 

 beautiful panorama of snow clad ranges, their mighty forms lifting 

 far above the abodes of men and extending for miles in every direc- 

 tion. I have gazed at the sky and I have listened to the birds and to 

 the roar of the mountain streams. And there, indeed, I have felt 

 "that fine sense of soul which brings the individual into touch with 

 Universal Purpose." Without attempting to elaborate the idea, I 

 undertake to say that there is something in the heart of the dullest 

 man who ever lived that responds to the beauties of nature. I firmly 

 believe it is this instinct which is sending the well-to-do from the 

 cities to the country, and which in the next few years will make the 

 reclaimed areas of the arid West sought after by the very best ele- 

 ments of our middle class population. 



James G. Elaine, in his eulogy of Garfield, referred to the fact 

 that our second martyred President was popularly supposed to have 

 been reared in direst poverty. The orator then went on to draw a 

 contrast between the poverty of city life and the "clean, sweet pov- 

 erty of the country." He showed that in the one case evil influences 

 predominate, while in the other there is every inspiration to noble en- 

 deavor. This is absolutely true. It constiiutes one of the very 

 strongest arguments in favor of national irrigation. In how many 

 biographies of successful men of men who have risen in politics, in 

 business, in the professions and in the arts do we read the same 

 familiar story of inspiration drawn from the strenuous experiences of 

 a poor family reared in the country. 



Now, the influences of rural life to which Elaine referred in speak- 

 ing of Garfield's boyhood are going to be far more wholesome and far 

 more inspiring in our mountain valleys and in this twentieth century 

 than they were in the Western Reserve of Ohio in the first half of the 

 nineteenth century. I cannot impress this point too strongly upon 

 your minds. The man who rears his sons and daughters in the rural 

 life of our irrigation empire will give them a better chance to become 

 useful men and women than boys and girls will have when raised in 

 the city a better chance, even, than young people enjoyed in the 

 brave old days of which we read in the biographies of our great men. 

 Let me show you what I mean. 



