THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY 99 



upon to do their proper share, not merely as citizens, but as aids 

 to the Government, if necessary in official positions. (Ap- 

 plause.) 



Mr. President, I know the hour is late. I do not wish to 

 speak longer, but if there is any one thing about which I would 

 like to be an apostle, it is the awakening of the average American 

 citizen from his indifference. 



President Harrison said: "The framers of our Constitution 

 and no set of men could frame a government so good and so 

 perfect that the best and the most intelligent citizens could go 

 away and leave it alone." 



The country needs your services. It needs them in all the 

 varied activities of politics; it needs the merchant; it needs the 

 doctor; it needs the working-man, though he be working in the 

 ditch. Let us all then bow and make our daily prayer: " God 

 bless and save the State." I am sure that this awakening is com- 

 ing; and we shall pass beyond a purely material plane up to a 

 higher plane on which this great Government, which is the pro- 

 tecting shield over all of us, will awaken a greater degree of love, 

 a greater degree of the attention, of each individual from the 

 Atlantic to the Pacific. 



You are celebrating your fiftieth anniversary. The names of 

 many of the members of this association have been written high 

 on the roll of knowledge. The past of the National Academy of 

 Science is certainly secure; the present is secure. I trust for you 

 all in the years to come there may be an enjoyment of the highest 

 degree of prosperity and happiness; that in your investigations 

 you may make such discoveries as shall gratify your ambitions, 

 and in the years to come, and when another fiftieth anniversary 

 has come, this association, as today, may stand among those in 

 the very forefront of scientific investigation and in the progress 

 of American life. (Applause.) 



PRESIDENT Remsen: Gentlemen, it only remains for me to 

 declare this meeting adjourned. 



(Whereupon at 11:40 o'clock p. m., the meeting was ad- 

 journed.) 



