state Convention—mutual dependence. 237 
case. There are scores of others if not as important, jet just as 
national in their character, for it will be seen that the opening of 
every new avenue of commerce, by just so much takes off the 
strain from all the rest. So then, as one by one these cheap high¬ 
ways of commerce are opened and government throws in here and 
there a double track railway, the work is done. 
But to conclude, you say it will take too long. Of course time 
is necessary to such an enterprise. With such an object before us 
we can afford to take time, and as the work is step by step ad¬ 
vancing it may seem to us with slow and wearisome tread, it will 
afford us a splendid opportunity to cultivate the Christian graces, 
especially of patience and forbearance towards our brethren of 
other callings. 
It will be well for us in this connection to keep in mind that 
there may be such a thing as asking too much even of a railroad. 
Were I to demand of the station agent at Beloit to freight pump¬ 
kins for me to Chicago, one hundred miles, at a rate that would 
make me a fair return for my labor on the crop, every one would 
say I was most unreasonable. No more so than to expect so 
crude an article as corn can be transported by rail from Iowa to 
New York, or wheat from Montana to Boston. Such unreasona¬ 
ble demands bring us into contempt, and will surely produce a 
reaction. Still you say it will take too long. Not so. We can 
secure permanent results in no other way half so quickly. 
Gentlemen, we are doing work not for a day, or a month, or a 
year, but for the ages. Not for any one locality but for our coun¬ 
try. Not for ourselves alone, but for our posterity. Let none of 
us say with the merry and improvident Irishman, “and what has 
posterity done that I should bother my noddle about him,” but 
rather with an eye to future rather than the present, to the grand 
possibility and probabilities of this vast continent, let us strike 
hands for a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together, and 
make an honest, earnest, persistent effort to secure an object at 
once worthy of our generation, and which we shall be proud of as 
a legacy for the generations yet to be. 
“So he fastened it with a nail that it should not be moved.” 
