12 



everything that is connected with usefulness to man, 

 everything that will tend to improve his moral and 

 intellectual character, and everything that will enable 

 him to rise with higher appreciation of what is good, 

 drawing him nearer and nearer to the Great Creator. 



I am almost afraid to trust myself to mention names 

 in connection with this address, but considering that 

 Benjamin Franklin and the worthies of those early 

 days, that George Washington and Thomas Jeffer- 

 son, and Robert Morris, and Alexander Hamilton, 

 and Thomas Willing, and David Rittenhouse, were 

 members of this Society before the close of the 

 eighteenth century, and that since then the Society 

 has been adorned by such men as Caspar Wistar, 

 Robert Patterson, William Tilghman, Peter S. Dupon- 

 ceau, Nathaniel Chapman, Robert M. Patterson, Frank- 

 lin Bache, .Alexander Dallas Bache, John K. Kane, 

 George B. Wood, and that other names of the illus- 

 trious roll such as Joseph Henry, Robert Hare, Henry 

 D. Rogers, J. Peter Lesley and Asa Gray have been 

 members during the present century, I think that I 

 can point my fellow-members to a roll which they 

 may study with great profit, realizing from it the in- 

 struction, the comfort, the happiness, I may say, in that 

 such men have lived and have contributed so largely 

 to the instruction of the world. 



Here philanthropy has also had its home. Many of 

 the great and useful institutions of the city of Phila- 

 delphia have been thought of, formulated and brought 

 into existence within these walls. The Pennsylvania 

 Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb, 

 the Pennsylvania Institution for the Instruction of the 

 Blind, the House of Refuge, the Apprentices' Library, 



