Celebration of the Fiftieth Anniversary. Ixxxvii 



suits of your long period of scientific investigation, and the 

 high place to which you are entitled in the field of scientific 

 endeavor. 



We may, therefore, with propriety, claim some privilege in 

 the recognition of your useful career, and may with peculiar 

 warmth, congratulate you upon the rounding out of the half 

 century of your record. Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, I 

 esteem it no small honor to be a delegate to this semi-centen- 

 nial celebration, and to be able not only to extend the con- 

 gratulations of the Engineers' Club of St. Louis, upon the 

 work 3'ou have done in the past, but also to extend our inter- 

 est and co-operation in your future scientific endeavor. 

 Permit me to express for our Club the hope that your achieve- 

 ments of the future may reflect even greater credit to your 

 organization, and justify even in a fuller measure the pur- 

 poses and ambitions of your founders. 



Mr. Reardon : — 



Mr. President, Members and Guests of the Academy of 

 Science : — When, on my way to this board, it occurred to me 

 that I might be called on to address this distinguished scien- 

 tific gathering on behalf of the Missouri Historical Society, 

 my mind reached out for impressions and recollections which 

 might enable me to share appropriately in the mental banquet 

 which I knew to be in store. The more I reflected the oftener 

 my mind wandered back to a " school of learning " once 

 established at Logoda in the land of Laputa, where strange 

 and curious erudition was reputed to flourish during the times 

 of long ago. One of the most erudite of the group was, if I 

 remember rightly, striving to establish a science designed to 

 abolish words from human ken ; and it struck me that I am 

 peculiarly unfortunate — and that you are still more un- 

 happy — in that I never enjoyed the benefit of graduating 

 from that institution. This scholar, as the story goes, used 

 to argue that it was extremely advantageous to health and 

 domestic economy never to speak ; that speech was highly in- 

 jurious to the lungs and materially shortened life ; and as a 

 substitute he proposed that since words were merely names 



