Complimentary Banquet to Luther Burbanfc 



with my own, the congratulations of both universities. We 

 honor him as a man of our kind, the kind the university de- 

 lights to make ; the kind of men who know things and can do 

 things; the kind of men to whom Nature is an open book, 

 and whose reading of this book is clear and truthful. 



I have come farther than any one else to this dinner. 

 When, on the 22d of August, in South Kensington, I re- 

 ceived Mr. Briggs' invitation to come here to do honor to 

 Burbank, I packed my trunk at once and sailed for San 

 Francisco. I came the very shortest way, by Londonderry 

 in Ireland to Belle Isle in Labrador. And on the way I 

 heard of this incident: 



On the 3Oth day of August, on the bleak coast of Labra- 

 dor, early in the morning, a few strangers came out of 

 their houses, houses they had brought with them on a ship 

 only a few days before, and climbing to the top of a hill, 

 pointed sticks and iron tubes at the sun. The natives said 

 these men were fools. Little by little the sun grew dark, 

 the brown shades stole over the hills, the light shrank to a 

 narrower rim, and then these natives said they were wizards. 

 Other people who knew of the eclipse of the sun and of the 

 expedition sent to Labrador to observe it, said "these are 

 men of science." 



Something like this has been Mr. Burbank's experience. 

 Years ago in Massachusetts, he crept around in the mud 

 half a day looking for the lone potato-ball on a plant with 

 which he had been playing. It had been torn off by the foot 

 of a stray cow. People said that he was a fool, not knowing 

 that this one potato-ball was the fruition of years of labor. 

 It was big with the potency of the Burbank potato. Later, 

 when a prosperous nurseryman, he let go all his business to 

 play with scissors and pollen and microscope, planting seeds 



. 25 . 



