their land in a thoroughly effective way instead of the wasteful and slovenly way which, by reason of the cheapness of land and the fertility of the soil, has been possible and altogether too common in the past. I appeal to the farmers of Minnesota to meet the responsibilities of their high calling in such a manner as will not only insure their own prosperity and the comfort and happiness of their families but will also contribute in a large way to the sustenance and welfare of less favored peoples of the earth.

Eleven years before the Civil War broke out in 1861, the value of the entire property of this country was only about $7,000,000,000. To-day the property of the country is more than $107,000,000,000, and the wealth created in a single year is three times the whole value of the property of the country in 1850. The war cost us half of the country's property. The wealth created in a single year now, if it were all applied to the cost of the war, would pay the entire cost five or six times. The products of our manufactures are more than $15,000,000,000 a year, and our farm products amount to more than $5,000,000,000. These are great figures. But this is a great country and hardly anything surprises us. Certainly we are not surprised that 80,000,000 of people should produce by manufacturing and farming an average of $250 for every man, woman, and child in the country, and that is what we are doing, and that, too, without taking into account the immense amount of labor expended all over the country in the great work of education and religion, the value of whose products can not be measured in dollars.

That is a very poor conception of the highest life

which makes it consist entirely in the production of material wealth whether drawn from the soil, the mines, or the arts. These products are all the means for man's continued and comfortable existence. They are means and not ends. The end is the intellectual and spiritual development of man, not mere existence as with the beasts that perish, but development, growth, the realization of higher ideals, the apprehension of the grandest truths, the restoration of man to that divine image in which he was first created. When men everywhere shall fully realize and live up to the idea of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men, the divine image will once more be stamped upon the race. Let us all do our best to hasten the day, in the joyous assurance that class jealousies and personal hatreds will then disappear, and men, loving their neighbors as themselves, will unselfishly do good to all as they have opportunity.

JAMES KENDALL HOSMER

Mr. President and Gentlemen:

Some few weeks ago at a banquet in this room I announced my intention of withdrawing from banquets, and from after-dinner speech making. I trust I shall not be censured too severely for forgetting my resolution, and consenting to be here to-night.

You remember that Shakespeare in his delightful play of Much Ado About Nothing, makes Benedict explain his change of mind as to getting married by saying, "that when I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think that I should live until I were married." And so when I said I was going to discard banquets and speech making, I did not think that I should ever live to see a banquet at which there was "Something More to be Said," my toast here tonight.

But even if this explanation is not sufficient, you will please notice that I did not come in until your banquet was over, and that, as I have not had any dinner, I am not making an after-dinner speech.

If, however, I were disposed to break my resolution on any occasion, I could find none that would be more attractive than the present. And no occasion would give me more delight than to be here,

*Extemporaneous address delivered at the dinner given Dr. James K. Hosmer at the Nicollet House, Friday evening, January 29th, 1904, by the citizens of Minneapolis.

and to say in a few plain words what I think of Dr. Hosmer, and of the obligations of Minneapolis to him.

It is a little hard to analyze a man, and, metaphorically, if I may say it to his face, dissect him. But yet I must be permitted to do so somewhat, because he is here for the purpose of being dissected. And I am here as his demonstrator in anatomy.

The first thing that impressed me about Dr. Hosmer, and has always impressed me, is that first of all he is a gentleman.

Now, a man may be a gentleman, and yet be very unlike Dr. Hosmer. Undoubtedly every man here is a gentleman. But there is not a man here that in any essential particular resembles Dr. Hosmer. He has his own individuality, his own personality, and all his little characteristics, that all blend together, and you feel, as you look at them, that they are all characteristic of a gentleman; that he wouldn't say a rough and unkind thing to any man unless he were compelled to say it; that nothing but a high sense of duty would induce him to be on any occasion anything but a gentleman. And such I have always known him.

Now, it is my impression, an impression that has grown the longer I have lived, that there are not very many great men in the world There are men far above the average in goodly numbers, but the number of men that are really great is comparatively small.

But there is a kind of greatness that is somewhat peculiar, which Dr. Hosmer possesses.

He is an historian of no mean rank; yet he is not a John Fiske; he is not a Dr. Parkman. He is a novelist of no mean rank, yet he is not a Thackeray.