In 1853 there was a World’s Fair in New York.  In the same year the dismemberment of the Republic was expected, and a book of several volumes was advertised in London, entitled “History of the Federal Government from the Foundation to the Dissipation of the United States.”  Only one volume was ever published.  The other volumes were never printed.  What a difference in New York city then, when it opened its Crystal Palace, and thirty-four years later—­in 1887!  That Crystal Palace was the beginning of World’s Fairs in this country.

In the presence of the epauleted representatives of foreign nations, before a vast multitude, Franklin Pierce, President of the United States, declared it open, and as he did so Julien, the inspired musical leader of his day, raised his baton for an orchestra of three thousand instruments, while thousands of trained voices sang “God Save the Queen,” “The Marseillaise,” “Bonnie Doon,” “The Harp that once through Tara’s Halls,” and “Hail Columbia.”  What that Crystal Palace, opened in New York in 1853, did for art, for science, for civilisation, is beyond record.  The generation that built it has for the most part vanished but future generations will be inspired by them.

The summer of 1887 opened the baseball season of America, and I deplored an element of roughness and loaferism that attached itself to the greatest game of our country.  One of the national events of this season of that year was a proposal to remove the battle-flag of the late war.  Good sense prevailed, and the controversy was satisfactorily settled; otherwise the whole country would have been aflame.  It was not merely an agitation over a few bits of bunting.  The most arousing, thrilling, blood-stirring thing on earth is a battle-flag.  Better let the old battle-flags of our three wars hang where they are.  Only one circumstance could disturb them, and that would be the invasion of a foreign power and the downfall of the Republic.  The strongest passions of men are those of patriotism.

The best things that a man does in the world usually take a lifetime to make.  A career is a life job, and no one is sure whether it was worthy or not till it is over.  I except doctors from this rule, of whom Homer says:—­

    A wise physician skilled our wounds to heal
    Is more than armies to the public weal.

Some may remember the stalwart figure of Dr. Joseph Hutchinson, one of the best American surgeons.  For some years, in the streets of Brooklyn, he was a familiar and impressive figure on horseback.  He rode superbly, and it was his custom to make his calls in that way.  He died in this year.  Daniel Curry was another significant, superior man of a different sort, who also died in the summer of 1887.  He was an editor and writer of the Methodist Church.  At his death he told one thing that will go into the classics of the Church; and five hundred years beyond, when evangelists quote the last words