Complimentary Banquet to Luther Bttrbanfc 



Mr. Mills: 



GENTLEMEN : . This banquet was given in part to signal- 

 ize the good fortune which has lately attended the career of 

 our distinguished guest. The Carneige Institution, founded 

 by an American philanthropist, has endowed the work of Mr. 

 Burbank with one hundred thousand dollars, payable in ten 

 equal annual installments. There is a high sense in which 

 this munificence will redound primarily to the benefit of 

 California. The species which Mr. Burbank will originate 

 will have their first acclimatization here. He will do for this 

 State, aided by the munificence of Mr. Carnegie, what the 

 State should long ago have done for itself. 



When the snows of winter fall upon the high summits 

 of the mountains, they are precipitated into the corrugated 

 sides of the lofty summits, and are congealed into glaciers. 

 When the genial sunshine, reinforced by the rains of spring- 

 time, fall upon these glaciers, they make no answer back to 

 the sun, but quietly disappear. They are melted into flow- 

 ing streams, which, passing with torrential velocity down the 

 declivity of the mountains, eventually emerge from the foot- 

 hills and make their way through the summer-crowned val- 

 leys below. Here they summon into life the verdure, the 

 fruits, the flowers and the harvests, and this verdure, these 

 fruits, these flowers and these harvests never reproach the 

 water which calls them into life and being for having once 

 been held in the grip of winter at the frozen summits. 



When the enterprise, the commercial instinct, the business 

 capacity and the selfishness, if you will, of man piles up for- 

 tunes mountain high, the genial warmth of a philanthropic 

 impulse sometimes thaws these glaciers and they flow through 

 the channels of nobler achievement, and bring into being 



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