COPY 
1EGACION ARGENTINA 
WASHINGTON 
im 
Gentlemen : 
I do not if I will be able to tell you. few words in or- 
/■n 
der to thank you for the pleasure and the honor which afford 
to me the kind invitation to meet Professor Holmes. 
We are here, gentlemen, congregated in the name of the 
Science, and especially of the American Inter -Continental 
Science. I am not, however, a savant , but a statesman, who 
did expend a great deal of the best days of his life among 1 men 
of science, art and letters, because I did think always that 
it is a patriotic duty for the clear mind of the truth states- 
man to tender the due honors to the pioneers of all civiliza- 
tions and to the workers of the basis of all standing Govern- 
ment:- and they are the patient, modest and often heroic en- 
quirers of the fadts of the Nature and of the phenomena of the 
moral caracter of the man* 
The scientific career is quite an evangelic mission. You 
go behind the light exposing your health, or your life, fighting 
sometimes with the distress amidst the modern expensive society 
and cutting always to the happy and lovely hours of the home, 
the time required by the discipline of your duties. You are 
never sure as the glorious soldier is, of the 'bright and mater- 
ial reward from your country if you fall in the field of the 
work or of the investigations. Often the soldier of the Science 
