10 Peoria Scientific Association. 
of scientific and literary matter has been disseminated among 
the people. 
No great things can be accomplished without great labor. It 
is not spasmodic effort, but steady, persevering labor which tells. 
It was not the brilliant array of professors who so successfully 
conducted that summer school ten years ago, which put this 
society on a firm basis, but it was the years of hard work which 
was done by a little faithful band who knew no such word as 
fail. While they were all the time reaping a rich reward for 
their labors, it was more than seven years before their work was 
at all appreciated by the public, and now there are but a com- 
paratively few who take any interest in it. It is to awaken this 
interest which is one of the objects, one of the aims of the 
society. If now, with the increased numbers and the increased . 
interest which has been awakened, we shall work in the future 
harmoniously and faithfully as we have in the past, we can 
achieve a grand success. We need both brain-work and money. 
We need a building, and the art school should be allied with 
us. We need facilities for publishing our transactions. Then 
we can let our light shine; we can then by exchanges get the 
transactions of all other similar institutions. I know of nothing 
which would give more character to the city, or have a better 
influence over it, than an institution of this kind. While men 
of means are building monuments to perpetuate their memory, 
if they would build such a monument as this it would be more 
enduring than granite. ‘The Cooper Institute in New York will 
perpetuate his memory long after the material walls have 
crumbled into dust. Girard College will do the same by its 
founder. ‘There are men in Peoria who have the same oppor- 
tunity. Will they embrace it? 
There are opportunities open-to all men in life, but how few 
embrace them. An opportunity lost is gone forever. 
Now, ladies and gentlemen, after reviewing the past and set- 
ting forth the objects of our association in the beginning of a 
new year is it asking too much to ask you personally one and 
all to take an interest in and feel a personal responsibility for 
the carrying out of its objects? We do not need to go abroad, 
we have rarely done so heretofore. Nearly all the work has 
