fills the world. Who ever may appear on the surface, Kansas 
is as true as ever too her early ideals. Men will not soon 
forget the days when he gave the world to know for certain 
that she would not suffer shackles to be put upon her own 
limbs nor on those of my human being upon her soil. The 
very soul of poetry was in that struggle; and it is not strange 
that from that day to this her people, if not always gifted 
with "the vision and the faculty divine," have certainly not 
been "wanting the accomplishment of verse." And thus we 
have gone along building up a State, guiding the potential 
energies of a new civilization, giving the unused sod to the 
wooing of sun and cloud, and counting our gains in store and 
our gains yet to be gathered. Of our material progress, never 
before equaled, the world has heard something. We have 
not kept it secret, nor failed frequently to remind the dwellers 
in less-favored lands of our incomparable soil, climate and pro-
ductions. But, after ail, have we not always understood that 
these are not the best nor the truest rewards ? Have we not 
often uttered the indignant self-inquiry: 
 
       "Shall we be lured by these things ? Are not we 
       A something more than mouth and eyes and ears, 
       To eat and look and listen life away?" 
 
      It is only by asking ourselves these questions, and by asklng 
them rigorously and earnestly, that we can attain to a 
true view of life. Whatever is best in human nature is appealed 
to by poetry. the sense of the beautiful, "the joy of 
elevated thoughts," the mysterious influence of music which 
neither science nor philosophy can explain, are in the truest 
sense valuable. It is not the possession of the reasoning faculty 
that most distinguishes man from the brute, but the possession 
of the aesthetic sense; and it is this that contributes 
most to his happiness. Great as is the debt we owe to science, 
it is my belief that the world could better spare a Newton, a 
Herschel, a Morse or an Edison, nay, it could better give them