Celebration of the Fiftieth Anniversary. Ixxxix 



cleanly incandescent bulb, and the telegraph and telephone rose 

 to extend our senses in such manner that the whole world 

 opens before us as a picture unveiled. In this great develop- 

 ment the Saint Louis Academy of Science has done its share. 

 I have watched your officers unfold the history of this organi- 

 zation from its beginning a half-century ago ; have noted the 

 principles which governed the original members, and watched 

 the ways in which their work and that of their successors 

 was performed ; and I feel that the utility of this organiza- 

 tion has exceeded the most sanguine expectations of its 

 founders, and that all kindred but younger institutions owe 

 Saint Louis Academy a debt too large for ready payment. 

 Our city and State are the better for the work of your body. 

 On behalf especially of the Missouri Historical Society I ex- 

 tend congratulations on the brilliant close of your first half-cen- 

 tury and express the hope that our relations may remain inti- 

 mate, harmonious, fraternal, and mutually beneficial. We have 

 with us about this banquet board poets to picture the Golden 

 Age, artists to outline bright ideals, scientists to analyze nature 

 and bring it within our ken ; at my side is an anthropologist, 

 who might point out the steps of progress from the condition 

 of Man Primeval to that of Man the Conqueror of Nature ; 

 there are those with us who comprehend those principles of 

 government that tend to unite men in impregnable nations; 

 there are with us authorities on moral and educational insti- 

 tutions, within whose ken lies the power to inspire the human 

 mind and heart with principles of patriotism and virtue ; and 

 still others who have helped to harness the lightning and con- 

 trol the powers of the air. Greece in her brightest day would 

 have deified the discoverer of the circulation of the blood ; yet 

 there are with us those who count the red and white corpuscles 

 of the life-giving fluid and trace the microscopic germs by 

 which its flow is affected and our lives curtailed or pro- 

 longed, and it has been my pleasure to associate with members 

 of this body who have helped to make the rough and rugged 

 hills to laugh like the smoothest valleys in fruitful harvests 

 and to make the barren plains blossom as the garden of 

 roses. So 1 rejoice in your presence and am glad in meeting 



