23 
attention, are brought forth with a precision and certainty that 
does not admit of a doubt of their recognition, and in many in- 
stances so rounded off by art that they as far excel the productions 
of the pencil or the brush as the monumental pictures which the 
God of Nature has planted on the surface of the earth in trees and 
flowers, valleys and mountains, rivers and lakes, excel those which 
it is possible by the skill of man in any other direction to produce. 
Now we sit at home and we hear the clicking of the telegraph, 
and it brings us a message from three thousand miles distance in a 
very little time. We put our mouth to the instrument of the tele-- 
phone and speak in a natural voice to a man at a hundred yards or 
a hundred miles or even a thousand miles distant, and there the 
voice is heard, the interrogatory is answered, and the answer is 
flashed back before one would think the words had escaped the lips 
of the interrogator. 
So that other marvelous instrument, the phonograph, takes down 
the very tones of our voice, engraving the words on cylinders of 
wax, which may be laid by in the closet and after a long interval 
of time be taken from its recesses and placed again in the machine, 
and, if the man and his voice have disappeared from the earth and 
his spirit gone to the God who gave it, that voice can be reproduced 
and be heard, and the lessons of philosophy perhaps contained in 
the engraved words may be read for the remembrance of his fellow- 
beings and fellow-workers, and, more than that, may be preserved 
and read for the use of the future. 
When I think of these marvelous inventions, and turn my thoughts 
next to what has been accomplished while I have been partaking in 
the affairs of the world and endeavoring to learn my own lessons of 
what is going on around me, I marvel more and more at the bless- 
ings which have thus been vouchsafed to me. I feel from my knowl- 
edge of the men who have grown up and been around me, and lived 
with me, and participated in the pursuits in which I have engaged, 
that all this glorious company has been educated up to a higher 
level than we had any reason to anticipate in our early life, and 
that we may safely cherish the hope that the good work which has 
been accomplished is not to terminate with our earthly career, but 
is to be enlarged, fortified, extended and multiplied for the blessing 
of the human race, and for the promotion of knowledge and pros- 
perity throughout the earth. 
Here I feel that I ought to stop, but I may give one more word, 
