soldiers have added lustre to the fair name and fame of our beloved Southland. Such men and such deeds make a country or a city great, and as a municipality can not differ from its citizenry, we feel that to be the favored guests of such a city and such a people is truly worth the coming.

Professionally, we are on. or very near historic ground. Near this place there lived a man, a physician, whose simple life touched few outside of this section perhaps, and whose quiet retiring nature, while proving his true worth, actually prevented him from reaping in full measure the just fruits of his discovery, which meant more for the alleviation of human suffering than all others before or since.

And it was near this spot he stood as one divinely inspired, and by virtue of his genius, prompted by a desire to help humanity, reached into the ethereal mists and drew therefrom the thin veil of unconsciousness and with knightly grace presented it to the world of sufferers. And today the world over, wherever the pain of operation is relieved, and the pangs of the woman in travail are mitigated, a silent though soulful prayer ascends, and a heavenly benediction descends upon the home and memory of Crawford W. Long.

One of the most delightful numbers of this session's programme is the unveiling of a monument to this great and good man, on the ground where his first experiments. were made. And as we look upon it, clean and white as his own spotless life, we know that the benefits of his immortal discovery will bless mankind long after this marble has ceased to endure. Its erection is a labor of love to the physicians of Georgia, and should stir the civic pride of those outside the profession, who realizing the beneficence of his labors, rejoice that a son of their native State, by the brilliant light of his genius, first led a suffering world to anaesthesia.

But allow me to say a word about ourselves, your

guests. You entertain a body of men who come from all over the State, the mountains of North Georgia, the traditional red hills of mid State and wiregrass section of South Georgia; from the laboratory, the office, the bedside, the open road. The specialist and the general practitioner elbow together, and for the time being all differences of professional duties and labors are obliterated— all are just doctors alike.

We do not come prompted by a spirit of commercial enthusiasm that promises either to you or ourselves material gain. We do not offer you stock in some new enterprise, or guarantee to boost the price of your real estate. And while it may not be complimentary to us to admit that we do sometimes neglect our own pecuniary interests, still it is true that they are often forced into the background by demands made upon our time in coping with disease, or relieving those in physical or mental distress.

Successes along these lines come to us frequently, but the world knows little of them, while our failures I may say are quickly buried beneath the sod of kind forgetfulness. But the great profession as a whole has wrought many things.

Since the day Jenner demonstrated that the loathsome disease smallpox could be almost banished from the earth, down to the present moment the efforts of the medical profession have been to make the bitter physical discomforts of the race more tolerable.

Note the almost complete eradication of the dreaded yellow fever during the present generation, and the successful fight now being waged against the great white plague that is sure to be fruitful of good results.

And, while nothing superhuman has been attempted, many things have been accomplished in the realm of medicine and surgery, that formerly would have been considered short of miraculous.

Hence it is that these members of the regular medical

profession are worthy objects of your hospitality, and are not spoiled by a little learning in the art of healing, nor puffed up with arrogant or jealous pride. I present them to you as men moving with conscious and respectful diginty, proud of the fact that they are members of our great profession, and striving to do each his part, to maintain the lofty standards of regular medicine.

Our days are alike and filled with more trials and disappointments than come to many, and so we are susceptible to kind words and gentle treatment. Your cordial words of welcome touch a responsive chord, and the end of our sojourn in your beautiful city will come altogether too soon.

Permit me again to thank you most sincerely, in behalf of the Medical Association of Georgia, for your warm words of greeting, and the hospitality you so generously offer us.

DR. RIDLEY'S RESPONSE

On behalf of the State Medical Association of Georgia, I thank you for this royal reception. It is with peculiar pride and pleasure that we assemble in the Classic City of the Empire State of the South, the flower of whose hospitality long ago blossomed into fullest fruition. We rejoice in the proud privilege of visiting this home of the beautiful and brave where, for more than a century, an enduring social charm has been linked to a deserved supremacy in letters and crowned with pre-eminence in culture.

Here, in these classic shades, where so many Georgians. have started up that steep of learning, which happily has no royal road, some of this honorable body have received that stimulus to high endeavor which spurred to after success and happiness, and, uniting with them, I wish to acknowledge that deep and lasting obligation to the Alma Mater who kindled in our young minds those

deathless inspirations which have illumined the pathway of our life work.

It was here that we read in the ruins of that other Athens, which bequeathed to this city the splendor of her name, the matchless story of her fadeless fame, forever interlinked with all that refines the taste, broadens and deepens the reason, plumes imperial imagination for its sublimest flights, strengthens the will and exalts the soul! To her unborn sister in a distant age that ancient Athens left the luminous legacy of an untarnished crown. How proudly, yea, how worthily this modern City of the Violet Crown has worn that dazzling diadem let her regal record of a cycle give proofs.

Athens was Greece. In the glorious golden age of Pericles, all Greece gave back her greatness and renown to this heart of her ripest culture and her loftiest life. So in this modern Athens is the crystal, burnished mirror in which Georgia sees reflected the puissance of her mightiest souls!

Here is that Pierian spring from which the master spirits of the Empire State drank generous draughts in aspiring youth. Here was illumed that divine fire whose quickening flame has shed undying lustre upon the annals of our beloved State! In the violet eyes of this beauteous queen we read the stirring story of the deeds. of her greatest sons.

But the proudest heritage vouchsafed to modern Athens by that Athens that was, was indeed the priceless legacy of her highest, her best ideals.

As this nonpareil city sits amid her classic shades pluming her young eagles for flight, she presents a grand and noble protest to the time-honored saying that Greece is living Greece no more! Not so the doleful strain which Byron tuned his lyre to sing:

"The Isles of Greece! The Isles of Greece!
Where burning Sapho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos rose and Phoebus sprung.
Eternal summer gilds them yet

But all except their sun is set!''

Ah, no, not all! What though Leonidas be dead,his valor lives. What though Pericles be ashes, the "fierce democracy" survives! What though Solon be a shade. the laws which he gave live on! What though Sophocles be a memory.-the action of the noble drama goes on! What though Demosthenes be but a ghosthaunting eloquence flows on whose pathos on the lover's lips doth melt the maiden's heart, whose fire doth still stir nations to their defense! What though the chisel has fallen forever from the hands of Phidias and Praxitiles--the brush from those of Parrhasius and Apelles.the grace and grandeur that were Grecian art are eternal!

Though the very Parthenon be wrecked-architecture still rears its superb head! Though the immortal godsthemselves which peopled the earth, the sea and the sky, are forever gone;-though Jupiter has lost his power to thunder, and Olympus be veiled in changeless gloom, though Neptune sways his trident no more.though Venus be a dream, and Minerva a memory;though the olive has dropped from Athen's nerveless hand, the laurel withered on Apollo's cold and beauteous brow,—

Still, love and beauty and power and wisdom and strength and greatness inhabit the earth, and the Most High reigns with a glory that gilds the very gloom of the grave! "That glory that was Greece" shines on! The caskets are but shattered, the jewels yet remain to brighten and to bless.

Behold in this your city of the Violet Crown the embodiment of the highest, best ideals of that antique civili