Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. These six States, having contiguous territory, have organized their Boards of State Charity upon similar if not identical lines. They have worked together and helped each other without jealousy or rivalry. Their capable and vigorous Secretaries have often been called on for missionary work in their own, each other's, and even in distant States.

I do not wish to be understood for a moment as disparaging the splendid aid of the members and Secretaries of the Boards of State Charities of Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and other States; but it is certainly within the limit to say that the brunt of the work of organizing and carrying on this great National Conference has been borne, that that continuity so necessary to certain development has been supplied, that that persistent interest needed to tide over periods of depression and comparative lack of success has been constantly exhibited, more by the Boards of Charities of the six States I have named than by all the rest of the nation combined. But, if so, they have had their reward. The Conference was planned for usefulness, and it has been most useful to us and ours.

But not only in benevolent work has the influence of this council of charity permeated. The prisoner has felt the wave of sympathy which has united charities with correction, and made us believe they are each a part of the one effort for human advancement. Not only among the trustees and officers of the great State institutions, those prominent persons who are always in the public eye, and who are a constant target for public criticism, has the Conference helped to take from partisan attacks their fiercest rancor, and to abolish favoritism and party influence with their baneful effects. The county or town almshouse, the orphanage, the jail, and the workhouse are all better, cleaner, and saner because of its work. In cities of half a million population and in the small, remote villages the poor relief is less recklessly and hurtfully scattered, the sick are better nursed, the orphans are better trained, the incorrigible have a better chance for reform; and all this is due, directly or indirectly, to the influence of this Conference, and is a result of its teachings.

I may say, Mr. President, for the West, or that part of it which I may claim to represent, that, excepting only the Church, no single agency for usefulness has had such far-reaching and beneficial effects as the National Conference of Charities and Correction. With us its influence and power for good has grown and still grows steadily year by year.

And, even as we learn to know and understand the true conditions of the life of the depressed and desolate people whose sorrows or sins call us together, we are not more despondent: we are more hopeful. The possibilities of humanity cheer us more than its despairs depress us. Not as idle sentimentalists, gazing with pity on pains and woes we cannot assuage, but as sympathetic, hopeful helpers do we come, to consider the cares and distress of these our weaker brothers and sisters. In this spirit we find strength and heart to sustain our work and to continue it, a work which we did not begin. It was given us in trust by our fathers and mothers. It is a work which will not end with our children, to whom we shall hand it down; but yet we believe it will not always be so irksome, so full of anxiety, as it is now.

For, though we believe that human suffering and sorrow will endure while sin shall last, we also believe that the worst evils afflicting humanity are not irremediable; and we hope that, as true civilization shall advance, even

"The fierce confederate storms of sorrow,
Barricadoed ever within the walls of cities,"

shall in a large degree be stilled. In that hope we come year by year to this Conference. In that hope we have come to this great city. In that hope we accept your gracious looks and words of welcome, and assure you that your sentiments find an echo in our hearts.

The CHAIRMAN.-In presenting the next speaker, I feel called upon to say a few words, and only a few, of introduction. I remember him first in the Sophomore Class at Harvard, where he and I successively resisted the rushes on the football field. He has been in this Conference from the beginning, and he has been constant in his attendance on this Conference for more than twenty years. I refer to Mr. Frank B. Sanborn, of Concord, who is the Wise Man from the East with us to-night, and who was the President of the Eighth Conference. I take great pleasure in presenting Mr. Sanborn.

ADDRESS OF MR. F. B. SANBORN.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen,— It is the sad prerogative of age to be called upon for the recital of past events which have escaped the notice of the historian; and who can wonder if, like Nestor

in Homer, we sometimes abuse the privilege, and undertake to make history instead of only reciting it? If, in responding to these generous welcomes, the eloquence of Nestor is denied me, I can at least promise you not to make so long a speech as he did, and not to insist so positively on the superior strength and wisdom of the men of the past.

It is twenty-four years, to the month, if not to the day, since this truly National Conference first came together in this city of New York and in the hall where we are to meet after this evening. It was called together by a Department Committee of the American Social Science Association, which had itself been founded nine years earlier, in October, 1865, upon the invitation of the State Board of Charities of Massachusetts, the only one then existing, and had

grown into a society of some importance.

66

You well remember, Mr. President, that, when we were beginning to be taught those beautiful truths of geometry which are supposed to lie at the foundation of all existence in time and space, and which are at once so simple and so hard to remember, we were told that space began with a point, a mere dot. We listened, but felt as Tom Sheridan did when told to prove that three angles of a triangle were equal to two right angles: he went to his tutor, and said, "Please, sir, was Euclid a good man?" "Yes," said the tutor, "I believe he was. Why?" "Well, sir," said Tom, I was he a moral man, a truthful man?" "Certainly," said the tutor, wondering what Tom was driving at. "Then," said Tom, "can't we take his word for all this?" holding up the problem. But to resume: we were taught as a great fundamental principle of geometry that everything proceeds from a dot, a point; that its motion generates a line, straight or curved, as the case may be; the motion of the line generates a surface, and the revolution of the surface develops the solid; and thus the whole universe of solid existence, and of superficial existence has come into existence in this interesting but mysterious way. The great globe itself, then, must have been produced by the revolution of curved lines. I cannot say that we distinctly understood this generation of the visible from the invisible, any more than we could positively answer that conundrum of the Schoolmen, "Whether a Chimera, burbling in a vacuum, could make a meal on Second Intentions."

Well, I have since seen the miracle performed,—a point invisible

Mr. ROBERT TREAT PAINE, 1895. Mr. ALEXANDER JOHNSON, 1897.

Rev. H. H. HART, 1893.

Mr. F. B. SANBORN, 1881.

Mr. LUCIUS STORRS, 1894. Gen. R. BRINKERHOFF, 1880.

Prof. C. R. HENDERSON, Pres.-elect, 1899. Mr. A. O. WRIGHT, 1896.

Hon. Wм. P. LETCHWORTH, 1884. Dr. CHARLES S. HOYT, 1888.

Hon. WILLIAM R. STEWART, 1898.

Mr. PHILIP C. GARRETT, 1885.