And thus have the inventors of the steam engine set in motion and placed at the disposal of mankind for every form of useful work all the great forces of nature; thus Hero of Alexandria touched the then concealed spring which called all the genii of earth, fire, water and air to do the bidding of the race.  Thus Papin, Worcester, Newcomen, Watt, and Corliss and others of our own contemporaries, have applied the genii to their task of leveling mountains, traversing seas, continents, and the depths of the earth, building ships, locomotives, hamlets and cities, cottages and palaces, turning the spindle, operating the loom, and setting motion and giving energy to every machine, doing the work of thousands of millions of men, converting barbarism into civilization, giving necessaries of life in profusion, comforts in plenty, and luxuries in superabundance.

Aiding and working hand in hand with those other genii of progress, the inventors of the printing press and of the telegraph, the telephone, and the electric railway, of the modern system of textile manufactures, of iron and steel making, of the mowing machine and the harvester, they have compressed into two centuries the progress of a millennium, destitute of their aid.  Every step taken under their stimulus, and with their help, is a step toward a higher life for all, intellectually and morally as well as physically; every advance in the improvement of their work is a gain to every man, woman, and child; every improvement of the steam engine is a help to the whole world.  This progress makes the day of the extinction of the system now grinding the populations of the earth into the ground, the day of the abolition of armies and the restoration to the people of that freedom which characterized the times of the patriarchs, and of the restoration of the rights of the citizen to his own time and strength and producing power, perceptibly nearer.

When this final revolution shall have been accomplished, and when all the world has settled down to the steady and undisturbed work of production by daily and regular labor, aided by the genii of steam, of electricity, of all nature, combined for good, the results of the intellectual activity of the inventors of the steam engine will be fully seen.  Then no monument will be required to keep green the memory of Watt, Corliss, or any other of these great men, but it will be said of them, as of Sir Christopher Wren in the epitaph in St. Paul’s:  “Seek you a monument, look about you!” Every wreath of steam rising to the heavens from factory, mill or workshop will be a reminder of Hero of Alexandria, every mine will possess a memorial to Papin, Worcester and Savery; every steamship will bring into grateful memory Fitch and Stevens, and Bell and Fulton; thousands of locomotives, crossing the continents, will perpetuate the thought of the Stephensons and their colleagues in the introduction of the railway; the hum of millions of spindles and