ADDRESSES OF MAJOR LACEY 323 



optimist. The statement I have just made is a full an- 

 swer to the pessimists who prophesy the early decay of 

 our fruitfulness. With these prophets of evil I have 

 never had any sympathy. 



I approve of the opinion of the old German who de- 

 fined a pessimist as "a man who in a choice of two evils 

 takes both of them." 



Iowa was carved out of that empire ; she was part of 

 Louisiana, then of the district of Louisiana, next placed 

 by Congress in the territory of Missouri. Had that law 

 remained unchanged the people of Iowa would have been 

 Missourians. Then Iowa became a part of Michigan, 

 next of Wisconsin, and finally she was molded into her 

 present form by the legislative hand. The memory of 

 the early days of the whole Louisiana domain will be now 

 revived in all the states within its borders. 



THE PIONEER DAYS 



The pioneer days of Iowa are ever a source of pleasure, 

 either in memory or in history. "In all that is good, 

 Iowa affords the best," is the terse way that her favorite 

 son, Sid Foster, has of putting in a few words what 

 everybody recognizes to be true. We all look back with 

 pleasure upon those old days. 



Dr. Robert Gray says that "the past is full of pleasing 

 recollections, the future is full of hope; we all quarrel 

 with the present." 



As Henry W. Grady said, the "old house that whistled 

 when the wind blew and wept when it rained, ' ' stands out 

 in our memory with greater delight than the most sump- 

 tuous of our modern homes. 



Every nation looks with reverence, if not with super- 

 stition, upon its ancestors. Usually their origin is traced 

 to the supernatural. But in our own short career we are 

 able to follow our ancestry into a plain, practical, and 



