Exhibition—Annual Addresses. 
67 
continent, anti almost reaching into every hamlet; our 70,000 miles 
of telegraph flashes living thought, and simultaneously lights up 
the whole nation with a blaze of intelligence. America places her 
lips to the rocks of the seashore and whispers her wishes to all Eu¬ 
rope, and is answered by the first wave that dashes on the beach. 
Our budding men and women, exceeding in numbers eleven mill¬ 
ions, are being nurtured into strength, and beauty, and bloom, in 
the shadow of the school-house, and by the developing power of 
OUR EXCELLENT EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM, 
the pride of the nation, and in no State more perfect than in Wis¬ 
consin. Charity erects her mansions and invites poverty from the 
deserts to loiter among the flowers; she builds hospitals for the sick 
and surrounds them with all the charms which can glow from 
sympathy and pitying tenderness, and to the weak and tempted 
she opens delightful retreats where the tempter sings not, and 
where danger is swallowed up in victory, Thus, this people have 
carved greatness out of the rude rock and the wilderness, turned 
adversity into prosperity, adorned their nation with the loveliest of 
virtues, challenged the admiration of the world, and developed 
from a handful of fugatives into a population of forty-three mil¬ 
lion. And whence comes this glory and power and perfection? 
What magic wand has touched the earth and brought forth our New 
Yorks and Philadelphias, and Baltimores and Bostons in the east, 
and our Chicagos and St. Louis, and Cincinnatis, and San Francis¬ 
cos in the west? What has dammed our streams and turned their 
currents upon the wheels of our factories, and made our Lowells 
and Lawrences and Fall Rivers, and your own Janesville? What 
was the torch which lighted the fires in our furnaces and roll¬ 
ing-mills, and what is it that has kept them burning from the 
day’s dawning till another dawn, and from the birth of January to 
the death of December? Wliat has sent the locomotive snorting 
from the Atlantic across the plains to the Pacific, and threading 
its way from city to city, and even rolling into the modest hamlets 
of the most unpromising sections? Why hover the ships in our 
harbors like bees about the flower, or confiding birds about the 
hand that feeds them? What has made the nation what it is—the 
patron of commerce, the promoter of education, the land of indus¬ 
try and enterprise, the gorgeous home of forty-three millions 
