my attempt has proven it to be so. Your Excellency, the Governor, Your Honor, the Mayor, and the other gentlemen who have addressed us: I wish to thank you on behalf of this association for the very eloquent and cordial words you have given us. They were in the air, floating about our ears and sounding through our whole hearts, before we came to your city, or before we saw your State, and the best evidence that we appreciate it is the fact that we have come in such magnificent numbers to enjoy it. This great company is the best assurance that we believed that Madison and Wisconsin has a body and a heart large enough to receive all these educators, representatives of every State and of every Territory, and of every grade of instruction throughout this great country, and we have come here to find that your hospitalities are large and full and free; like your prairies, they are almost boundless, like the horizon stretching out before us to an almost unlimited extent, and we thank you for this greatness of heart and this liberality of spirit that has opened your doors as well as your hearts, that has consecrated to our service this whole State for the benefit of this great National Association. In fact your scenery, this beautiful air, these lovely lakes, all that we have seen in our travels through the West, have been to us a source of welcome and inspiration, and as we meet here to-day to touch hands and hearts with this noble band of educators of the Northwest, so ably represented by our friends Mr Chandler and Dr. Bascom, who have spoken to us, we are moved to great depths of feeling by the friendliness of the relationship which cements and binds us together. You are something like a little Kentuckian who said that his live weight was a hundred pounds, but when he was mad he weighed a ton. So it is with the citizens of Wisconsin. Your live weight may be a hundred pounds, but when you attempt to show us your liberality and your spirit you weigh tons, and we are glad to come to realize to some extent this generosity of welcome which you have accorded to us. In fact the happiest man I have seen is the man who has stowed away four thousand teachers, and he was at the depot yesterday looking for more worlds to conquer."

You, therefore, Your Excellency, and ladies and gentlemen, have the credit and the honor, and the glory, it may be, of having set in motion, through your large-hearted invitations and the splendid opportunities afforded us here, forces and influences which stir the heart of this Nation from its centre to its circumference, and shall send forward a great national movement from this meeting which shall uplift and build up an educational sentiment truer and deeper and more lively than has ever been felt on this continent before. If this object is consummated, how the hearts of the members of this association will be delighted, and how the educational work of this country shall advance with great rejoicing. These homes of Madison, these beautiful scenes, this park and this capitol, all are ours for our enjoyment for these few days, and there are other blessings far beyond. This is but the doorway. We have just entered the portico

of this magnificent mansion of the Northwest. Oh! how grand it is. What its present is you perceive. What its future shall be your imagination and mine cannot conceive. How grand to have the men and women from the East come up to see this lively representation of the grandest work of our republic. How grand to have the men and women of the East, the more conservative forces of our country, come up here to be enlivened and enlightened by the progressive spirit which fills and thrills every heart and nerve of this great system of republics of the Northwest. And how grand it is that we may come here together as brethren and sisters in this great educational movement, to be ourselves lifted a little higher toward that eminence on which God stands.

Brethren, receive these congratulations from our friends, and further we return to you, dear friends, the heartiest sympathies, the bursting sympathies of our heart for what you have done for us. No other city in this land, I am sure, could have done what Madison has done. No other State could have done it and our thanks are due to you, Your Excellency. You met me with open arms and a ready palm and a Western grip, and you said, "Come, and bring your forces with you." You discounted me a little when I told you we might have 1500 or 2000 people here, and I hardly dared promise you what I thought might come. I had to stand on a very difficult platform when I came here, promising a little, knowing what might be, but hoping for the grandest meeting of educators ever held on this continent. Our expectations are realized, and I hope that you are gratified; that our efforts have been satisfactory and a pleasure to you, as well as a delight to us. Without further remarks on this occasion, I take pleasure in introducing to you some of our members who will respond more fittingly than I can to your grand and noble words. The National Association was formed in 1857. We have some of its fathers here to-day. In fact the man who wrote the first call for the first meeting sits on the platform by my side, and I have the pleasure of introducing to you, Dr. D. B. Hagar, not the man who wrote the Declaration of American Independence, but the man who wrote the declaration of independence for the National Teachers' Association of the United States. Dr. D. B. Hagar, of Salem, Mass., than whom no one can more fittingly respond to these words of welcome from our friends of the Northwest.

DR. HAGAR: Ladies and Gentlemen: Fortunately for me, and more fortunately for you, the President has not called upon me to make a speech. He has simply asked me to read a call for a convention of teachers to form an educational association. It happens that I have in my hand the original copy of the call which was put forth in 1857 calling for an assembly of teachers in the city of Philadelphia. I think it no more than just to a well-known educator of the state of New York that I refer to him as the man who first conceived the plan of forming a national association. I refer to James W. Valentine who for many years was a teacher of a grammar school in the city of Brooklyn. At that time he was the president of the New York State Teachers' Association. He wrote to me suggesting that there ought to be a summons for a national meeting of teachers. He wrote also to presidents of state associ

ations throughout the country asking them to join with him in organizing a national association. That call was responded to favorably by only nine of the Presidents of the several State associations. The larger portion of those Presidents did not believe it practicable to organize such a body, and they declined to sign the call. But nine were willing to attach their names to the call. I have been requested to read, as a matter of historical interest, the call that was put forth in 1857. [A copy of the original document may be found in the President's address which follows.] This call is dated May 15, 1857. In accordance with that call a number of gentlemen assembled in Philadelphia for the purpose of considering whether it were expedient or not to organize the proposed association. The meeting was very small in numbers. I remember that our first meeting was held in the Common Council Room of the city of Philadelphia, and there was ample room in that Council Room for more than were present. But very few assembled at that time had any great faith in the success of the proposed enterprise, and few only were in earnest. Four of the gentlemen then present are here with us to-day. Many looked on and said, "It is impossible. The interests of the different parts of the country are so various, and in some respects so contrary that it will be impossible to harmonize them so as to form a successful body." The babe that was born there in Philadelphia started into life looking rather sickly. Many prophesied its early death. But that babe grew into stalwart proportions, and now, at the age of 27 years, it has grown so large that it needs more room, and so it has come out into this great northwestern region to get a chance to grow. I do not care to detain you longer. So many emotions come to my mind as I contrast that first meeting with this greatest of educational meetings that I have no words at command to express those emotions. I can only say in conclusion, when I consider from how small a spark this great educational flame has grown, Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth."

THE PRESIDENT: Ladies and Gentlemen: I have shown you the writer of our declaration. I now present to you Dr. Richards, of Washington, first President of the Association, one of the most distinguished and prominent teachers in the country.

DR. ZALMON RICHARDS: Ladies and Gentlemen: I suppose President Bicknell wants to present the first nurse of that babe born in Philadelphia. So he has been a nurse, and if some of you had passed through the first three years of the history of the National Association you would have seen that the nurse had something to do. When the first annual meeting was held in Cincinnati, five members only were present to grace the ceremonies on that occasion, one sitting in that part of a large audience, another here, another there, who has gone to his grave, and another by my side, with a company of fine, noble gentlemen on the platform to speak for us, but within one hour's time one hundred members united themselves with us, and some of them are here upon the platform to speak for themselves.

THE PRESIDENT: I have presented to you one of the fathers. You have seen the nurse. Now I am going to present to you one of the godfathers, Dr. Pickard, of Iowa.

DR. PICKARD: Mr. President and Ladies and Gentlemen: I can conceive of but two reasons for calling me out on this occasion. The first is that I may show the difference between the depleted East and the full-fledged West. You have been told that the best part of the West has come from the East. You have seen what it has left of the East. Another reason, I suppose, for calling upon me at this time was because of my early acquaintance with a portion of the West. What I knew of the West is all East now, and I do not feel, my friends, like standing here to represent anything but Wisconsin. I cannot do it for the life of me. Nineteen years I resided in this State, and

associated in the early days with the men who have addressed you, riding over the prairies of the West with this good Governor Rusk, with whom I am not ashamed to ride, and another, a representative also of the young life of this State that has appeared before you, with one hand welcoming you, but in that hand a heart as big as is held by both hands of most people. Governor Fairchild was a boy in the University when I first knew this part of Wisconsin. I want to say also, for your comfort, perhaps, that I was instrumental in part in calling the attention of this Association to Wisconsin. Forgive me if I have called it wrong, if I have promised anything for the State and for this city that has not been fulfilled; and yet in the midst of all the joy that appears here, in the midst of all the welcome we have had, in the midst of all the congratulations for the work done, I have just one word of fault to find, and that word is that they have left my bed with only one person in it besides myself. I expected two or three when I came here, and I think that is a somewhat common fault. I want to say also in behalf of those who have been so thoroughly welcoming us that we of the great West, who have come in here to partake of your hospitality, came expecting to be entertained. We came expecting to receive a full welcome, as we have received it. We came also knowing the heart that was in you. We came knowing that the house was small but the heart was large. I recall an incident some twelve years ago in that neighboring village of Chicago where in a small house, simply sufficient for four persons, as we thought, there was brought in one night, when a hundred thousand persons were homeless, a family of eleven people additional to our own, and that family found abundant rest, and how? Why, I would lie down on the floor and go to sleep and be stood up in the corner, and let somebody take my place. That is what you could have done here if you would. Put your guests to sleep and stand them up in a corner, and put somebody else in their beds. I have many a time in this State been put into the bed of a person who had occupied it the first part of the night. We know something about" school sections" in this part of the country. We know how they have been filled with beds and with people lying foot to foot and head to head, lying touching each other so closely that their hands could not kill the mosquitoes without touching somebody else. Now, my good friends, there are grumblers here of course, but they do not mean anything by it; that is only their way of expressing their joy. You know there are a great many people, like Mark Tapley, who are only happy when they are miserable. And those who are thus grumbling are most supremely happy. Take joy then if you are complained of, in the knowledge that this is the best way that some people can express their joy. There are those that would not go into Heaven, I believe, if the angel did not come down with a coach of gold and take them from the gate. There are some perhaps that thought they ought to have been waited on at the depot by some one besides the omnibus. There are some, I know, who feel very happy to be here, and there is nobody any prouder of the work done in the city of Madison, nobody prouder of the work done in the State of Wisconsin, than one who was in it before it became a State, one who travelled across from the lake to the Mississippi River when there was hardly a resting place between the two, one who has known something about the wild prairies and about the fires sweeping over those prairies, who has slept on puncheons, with a horse blanket for a mattress and a buffalo robe for the cover, or the other way, and been invited to breakfast in this way, "Please haul up a cheer and help yourself to such as you love best.”

There was not a chair in the house, and what I loved best must have been corned beef or bacon, but I know there was no warmer heart in the State of Wisconsin than that of my host at that time. I am proud of being a guest, and now let me say I am proud of being your host. Welcome all to this State, that I will for the moment take for my own State in the past, and whenever you see fit to go across the Mississippi River into the next State west you shall have just as warm a welcome as you received here, and more room on the prairie. There are not so many lakes there to crowd you.

THE PRESIDENT: The next speaker, father or god-father, or nurse, or what I do not know, is one of our distinguished men, one of the leaders of thought and action in this country and one of the distinguished Presidents of this Association. He is now in the early days of life and we have great hopes as to his future. I have great pleasure in introducing to you Dr. White, of Cincinnati, Ohio.

DR. WHITE: The hearty and eloquent words of his Excellency the Governor, and the other representatives of this great Commonwealth and this beautiful city have stirred me with uncommon emotion, but there is in this occasion an eloquence that cannot be put into words. There is a thought in such a body as this, gathered under such circumstances that no human language can express, and it is the eloquence of this occasion, it is the circumstances under which we have met this morning that have stirred me with the deepest emotion and have aroused in my mind the most stirring, the most promising thoughts. Just as we sit and stand here the mind goes back fifty years when this grand commonwealth had no word of welcome, had no great people or city, but was silent with the thought and the purpose of God, who spread out this rolling country, who fashioned this great valley of the Mississippi for His grand designs and who looks down on us this morning seeing in part the accomplishment of that great purpose; and this occasion speaks with a voice that comes from the very throne of Omnipotence, and from the mind and heart of Him who has brought this nation into being, and who is guiding it for great purposes for the good of man. And now the thought that comes out of this is, why are we here, and why this hearty welcome of teachers and these educators of the country? Is it because the education which is here represented touches the material prosperity of this great nation, because the school-master, by the creation of wealth, is belting this continent with roads and bridges of iron, is filling it with cities and homes that are blessed with ease and comfort and satisfaction snch as no other people ever enjoyed? Is it that these schools are touching with beneficent power the industrial prosperity and wealth of this great nation? Is this the significance of this hour. If these schools did nothing else they would be worthy of the welcome of this occasion, but, as I read it, there is a higher purpose. Is this occasion significant because this occasion which is here embodied and is here represented is making possible the perpetuity of this great nation of ours? Is it because these teachers are laying the foundations of civil liberty in this land so firmly that generations to come shall rest securely thereon? Is it because the perpetuity of this grand heritage of our fathers is dependent on the work of these teachers? Is that the instinct and full significance of this occasion? If it were, it would be sufficient to account for it all, for this grand nation of ours has a function and a purpose in history that is worthy of all the effort that is being made in education, and in every other form, for perpetuating and establishing it securely on its foundation. In 1820, in that remarkable centennial address at Plymouth Rock, Webster laid down three conditions for the perpetuity of the American Republic. These conditions were, universal education, universal religious training, and the proper division of landed property. the schools of this country are aiming certainly to realize the first of those conditions. And so out of that fact alone, this occasion would have significance. But, my friends, what is this country? What are these institutions, and what is this material wealth, but a means to a sublimer end, and that end is man. This people are higher than their institutions, and their institutions have meaning because they contribute to the worth and glory of this country. And so in welcoming this great body of teachers here today, we are welcoming those who are doing more than touching material wealth with power; more than those who are laying the foundations of civil liberty in this land and fortifying it against all enemies within and all enemies without. We are welcoming those who are touching with beneficent power that for which these homes and wealth exist and that for which this Republic is established, a great people, whose life and whose work transcend all institutions and all material things. You are welcoming those who look upon these boys and girls as the richest inheritance of God, and whose sublimest duty it is to fashion them into men and into women with the thought of God stirring their hearts and the purpose of God leading them to a true manhood and a true life. These teachers are not making artisans as their chief purpose. They are not training soldiers, they are not training citizens; they are making men and women, and fashioning them and culturing them toward the image of God in which we are all created, and to this sublime work this great West calls anew. And we here would consecrate this great body of educators to this sublime work, and make this generation of children in our schools go out from these schools, not only with skilled hands and healthy bodies, and loyalty to country and purpose to defend the rights of the people to the end, but make them go out with hearts pure, with minds widened and ennobled, and with a consecration to all that is true and good and beautiful in human life. May this generation of children take up this heritage which has passed to them and make it wiser and better than it has been. Now the great West summons this great body of teachers, not only for the highest glory of the country, but for the uplifting of the people and the blessing of the world, and that highest function is the forming of right

And