Repoet of Boaed of Geneeal Managees. 49 



sented at this great exposition, we open this building and place it under 

 the administration of the officers of the World's Fair. We believe that 

 New Yorkers will recognize in its architecture and appointments some- 

 thing worthy of their State, and foreigners will have their attention called 

 to the marvelous growth of our great Commonwealth. Should the Euro- 

 pean ask for a condensation in statement or in picture of the benefits of 

 the discovery of America, and the resultant and greater benefits of the 

 declaration of American independence, we would take him through this 

 building. We would say to him: " This structure represents but one of 

 the forty-four States of the American Union." New York contributes 

 every year more for the education of her people, more in charity and 

 benevolence for the relief of the helpless, the injured and the maimed, has 

 greater facilities for the transportation of her citizens and her products, 

 is further advanced in the arts, in the sciences aad in the inventions, pos- 

 sesses greater wealth, more extensive and valuable commerce, could raise 

 and put into the field a more efficient army, and upon the seas a more 

 powerful navy, than all Europe could have done at the time Columbus 

 sailed from Palos. 



When Abelard, that brilliant teacher and unfortunate genius of the 

 dark ages, began to teach, thousands of students from every country 

 gathered about him. They were eager to learn and to know the truths 

 which had so long been denied them. Here, on the shores of this great 

 lake, within this inclosure, and in these mammoth buildings will be an 

 international university. Peoples of all the earth will flock to it, and its 

 teachings will be felt for all the time to come in every corner of the globe. 

 It will instruct the American first of all in the greatness, the glory, the 

 productiveness and the possibilities of his own country; but it will teach 

 him also the needed lesson that other nations possess their own peculiar 

 excellencies and have also made great advances in the arts and liberty. 



As each race presents here its developed resources and shows in what 

 respect it may be superior to all others, the sum of human perfection 

 gathered from many countries will become the common property of all the 

 world. By the glorious memory of Peter Stuyvesant and his successors 

 in the gubernatorial office, by the cosmopolitan spirit of our city, by the 

 broad hospitality of our State which has always welcomed the immigrant, 

 educated him to our standard and conferred upon him our citizenship, and 

 on behalf of my associates in the commission, I give this building to the 

 uses of the fair during its existence. Afterward I trust it may be the 

 dwelling place of our New York spirit as the club of our people who have 

 settled in the West. 

 Y 



