and he is likely to be looked at too curiously by his eastern brethren. I want to say to you who love nature, I want to say to you who love to dwell in pleasant places, come to Colorado. Enter her mountains, sit by her rills and fountains, and hear the gurgling of her brooks. Climb her mountain peaks, and if you never have felt communion with nature, you will feel it there. If you have any weariness or any sorrows, they will fade away. If you are old, it is the philosopher's stone, and you will become young. If you have never listened to the voice of the Deity, stand there in that grand amphitheatre with the spires towering upward and looking downward upon you, and you will listen to the voice of the Deity there. If you have never listened or understood what revelation meant, there, as you look up toward those mountain peaks, towering above the clouds, you will find the interpretation, of nature and of divinity, and you may realize what revelation means. I most cordially, in the name of the people of Colorado, invite you to come and see all for yourselves. PRESIDENT CALKINS:-There is another large state in the West, not quite so far towards the north as Colorado, concerning which it has been stated that it is not only larger in area, but larger in its school funds than any other state and that it has the youngest state school superintendent. I do not think he is present to-night but I believe we have a principal of one of their Normal schools, whom I will call upon, H. T. Kealing, principal of a Texas Normal School. MR. KEALING (Colored). Hailing from a State, princely in its domain, unparalleled in its resources, lordly in its munificence, I would be a degenerate son if I did not give her words of fond recollection here to-night. Speaking to a noble people, upon the sacred soil of a State equally grand with my own, in all except the extent of area, I would be an ungrateful guest if I did not voice her praise. Speaking as a representative of a race as yet unfathomed in its powers, untried in the higher walks of civilization, yet struggling forward with strained nerves to reach the goal, desired of all nations, I would be but a traitor's mouth-piece if I did not mention their aspiration. Addressing you as a humble worker would address the assembled wisdom and experience of his class, I would indeed be presumptive if I did not plead my zeal in the work as an extenuation for daring to join the ranks of this great brotherhood. Friends have praised the negro for his progress; others have pronounced him a failure; but the negro has never blushed with pleasure at the praise, nor with anger at the criticism, because on account of a peculiarity of his cuticle, he was born to blush unseen. I might further state that with all the boasted advantages and rightfully boasted, which Kansas possesses, and the noble-hearted people of Kansas, that there is one regard in which the negro stands vastly superior, and as a model for the world. Did you ever notice how anxious white ladies are to curl their hair? God curled ours. But to be serious. Friends, there is much ground for those who speak against us and there is ground for those who speak for us. The negro is now standing at a transition period, when the old elements are clashing in daily warfare with the new. That time is seen in nature when the howling blasts of winter meet the spring upon the battlefield of March. That time of transition is seen again in nature when the seed bursts the shell and kernel and comes forth. This is all but the marching and the counter-marching in the strategy to overcome the disintegrating tendencies. of dead matter. And so with the negro. The cotton patch and schoolhouse in the South are contiguous. The old man, bent and bowed with the sorrows of a past life walks side by side with the bright-eyed urchin, of active limb, in the present, and we believe that out of all confusion, out of this mixing of the good and bad, out of lack of definiteness there will finally evolve order of a higher kind than we have yet seen. For right is right, Since God is God, And right the day must win. To doubt would be disloyalty, To falter would be sin. A word about the peculiarities and traits of the negro; they are but as the weeds that attest the fertility of the soil, As the product of the learning which the great body of noble men and women have conveyed to us; as the product of the liberality of the State and the sympathy of the white educational forces of our State, we have learned that freedom means not only physical emancipation, but disenthrallment of the mind; that he is the free man, whom the truth makes free. PRESIDENT CALKINS:-I will now take the liberty to call upon Ladies and Gentlemen :-I will tell you a secret; and that is that the President never said a word to me about my speech until this moment. I feel very much as Hawthorne did on a certain occasion ;-I wish I could feel more as he did on other occasions. He was invited to a great public dinner in England, but being a very modest man he had made arrangement that he should not be called upon to make a speech; but in violation of that arrangement, as the President has just done, Hawthorne was called. He was enjoying the efforts of his predecessors in their attempts to be eloquent, and chuckling to himself that he was having a good time generally, but suddenly being called upon, after the confidence he had re posed in the President, he said, "I knocked upon the door of my mind and found there was nobody at home." In that respect I resemble that man. Now, the people of this country think that the people of Ohio are always striving to put themselves in any places that may be open, but that is not the fact. Now, I think I can say of Ohio, as Daniel Webster did upon a certain occasion of Massachusetts. I remember, sir, this may not be entirely new to most of the audience. "I shall enter upon no eulogy of Massachusetts, she needs none; there she is, behold her for yourself." So I shall enter upon no eulogium of Ohio; she needs none. I will enter upon, however, an eulogium of one or two of her daughters. We are accustomed to call Iowa-I do not know whether there is anybody here from Iowa to-night-but we are accustomed to call Iowa one of the daughters of Ohio; and we also remember that Kansas is another daughter, and I was going to say something complimentary of those daughters -go right on with your cheering it does not embarrass me in the least. Those two daughters are exceedingly goodly to look upon. In other words, they are handsome girls; they are intelligent girls, they are lovely, altogether lovely, and I am glad to see so many of them here to-night. Now I want to say to those young people who have gone out from Ohio,— some of them went out thirty years ago,-I want to say to those who came out to live in the West, leaving our state thirty years ago, that you look about as you did when you started. You seem to have the same vigorous and youthful look. I suppose it is because of the climate. would not have supposed that this climate was so good. You know generally that children away from home always carry with them good wishes and the prayers of the friends they leave behind, that they may grow up. and do a good work in the world. And that is the way we think about those who have gone from us to Kansas and Iowa and Minnesota. We have them still farther away, in San Francisco. That is about the only riches we have, the riches of these children that we have sent out. You know that old Roman lady, who had not any particular amount of this world's goods, said that her jewels were her two boys. Now, our two girls are our jewels; so are our schoolhouses that I have just mentioned; and we are expecting to bring other jewels of the same sort from Ohio until we have them reaching from the Buck Eye state to the Pacific slope. I hope this Association—and I know I shall please my friends in San Francisco when I say that, will go from Kansas over to Colorado and see those mountains that my friend so eloquently describes, and feel that the earth is wider and that it is a good place to live in, and that we shall have kindly feelings from one end of this continent to the other. Ladies and gentlemen-now you will see, I think, without a moment's hesitation, that this is altogether an unpremeditated address. Now, please call upon somebody who has been meditating, and you can tell it in a moment from the way he starts out. PRESIDENT CALKINS:-We have some states in the Union that are not as broad as Kausas, nor as wide as Texas, nor as far toward the setting sun as Colorado. I will introduce to you, to-night, a representative of the smallest state in the Union - Mr. Littlefield, Superintendent of schools of Newport, Rhode Island. PROFESSOR LITTLEFIELD'S ADDRESS. Mr. President :—I am very glad to have an opportunity of briefly addressing this distinguished company, for the sake of the personal acquaintance, which I trust will be vouchsafed to me hereafter by my hearers through the very kind introduction which I have received. I need say nothing about Rhode Island. She stands there, the author of the American school system, by herself, as stands the old stone mill with lofty tower, which to this very hour stands looking seaward. My thoughts this evening are perhaps broader than our little state, having had the privilege, during the past two weeks, of attending great educational conventions at Bar Harbor, Maine; at Niagara Falls, New York; and to cap the climax here in Topeka. My heart is full this evening, sir, with boundless gratitude, for the wonderful development of education in this land. Whenever we consider the mighty facts, whenever we stop to consider that our American school system has become, in many respects, the model for the school system of foreign nations; that our country spends four times as much money for free education as any other country in the world, and that we with our three hundred thousand teachers, against onefourth as many lawyers and one-fifth as many doctors, have doubled the number of pupils, teachers, and normal schools of any other country except Germany and one-third more even than she; when we consider the phenomenal growth and prosperity of the public schools, we ought, as we do, to take great pride in them; especially on such a congratulatory evening as this, at the close of a series of wonderfully successful, profitable, admirable meetings with which we have been favored. But we ought not, sir, on account of the proud position of the schools, to lose sight of the still larger possibility of the future. The common schools, in my judgment, praiseworthy as they are, are not yet half-way up the eminence of their possible attainment. If they expect to maintain their foremost place they must continue to wave high the banner of educational reform. We have the influence of earnest teachers who have made a study of the situation, and the results are of the greatest importance. PRESIDENT CALKINS :-I will present to you Daniel B. Hagar, Principal of the Normal School at Salem, Massachusetts, and President of the National Council. ADDRESS OF MR. HAGAR. Mr. President: Quite a number of years ago a good deal was said in old Massachusetts about a place called Kansas; and so much interest was excited by what was said about Kansas, that quite a large number of our Massachusetts men concluded that they would come out here a-gunning. They came with their guns, and I believe, to some extent, they used them. At any rate it was so reported. Now those men settled here in Kansas, and their sons and their daughters are here, and as a Massachusetts man I am delighted to see you. I have no doubt you will be glad to hear a little from the old homestead, as to how are affairs in old Massachusetts. You know down in Massachusetts we never boast; we leave that to other states; but I will say for the gratification of the descendants of Massachusetts who may be present, and who reside in this goodly country, that Massachusetts is where she was. Somebody, I think, has said there is a Bunker Hill. I am happy also to say that the greatest teapot that the world ever saw a teapot that required three hundred boxes of tea to supply one tea party is still down in old Massachusetts. Cape Cod still projects into the Atlantic Ocean ready to show itself to any foe. Educationally, Massachusetts is by no means stationary. No longer ago than 1839 the first State Normal School ever established in the United States was opened in that historic town of Lexington, with just three pupils, and that was the beginning of the normal school system in this country. Now Massachusetts has five State Normal Schools, all filled. She has also an Art Normal School - I believe the first and only State Normal School in America; and it has by its success satisfied the people of Massachusetts that the school ought to continue. And there are, arising in Boston to-day the walls of an $80,000 building for the exclusive use of a free State Art Normal School. We think that Massachusetts is doing a little something. Mention was made by some one, in the course of the evening, on the subject of tenure of office, on the part of the teachers. We have had a struggle in the Massachusetts Legislature for several years past in regard to this matter of tenure of office. At its last session the Lesislature passed a law to this effect, that every school board in the State is at liberty, after a teacher shall have labored one year, to elect that teacher for an indefinite time; and hereafter teachers will stand the same as members of other professions as lawyers and doctors and ministers, upon their merits. They will not be subject to eviction at the hands of persons who perhaps may not be acquainted with their merits, and who cannot always be good judges of what teachers ought to be. This is all I have to say in regard to Massachusetts. I would simply add that we rejoice in the prosperity of this great State of Kansas. We rejoice with you as with our other brethren. We are all one, and probably no other state in the Union would be so likely to excite the sympathies |