I am here to-day, returning to my duties at Washington from a trip taken to meet some of my old comrades during the war. There are some here this morning. I bid them God-speed; I give them a comrade's greeting; and to you, my old-time friends, not in politics, but in that pride and association which makes us all Indianians—we are all proud of our State and proud of our communities—I desire to say that while I have friends elsewhere, these were my earliest friends—friends of my boyhood almost, for I was scarcely more than a boy when I became a citizen of this State, and I always turn to it with affectionate interest. [Cheers.]
[MUNCIE, INDIANA, OCTOBER 13.]
At Muncie the assemblage was very large, numbering over 10,000, and the President received the most vociferous greeting of the day. Here, as at other points in the State, hundreds of General Harrison's old friends crowded forth to welcome him and bid him God-speed. Prominent among these were: Hon. Frank Ellis, Mayor of the city; Hon. M. C. Smith, Hon. John C. Eiler, Hon. Fred W. Heath, Hon. W. W. Orr, Hon. O. N. Cranor, Hon. Geo. W. Cromer, Judge O. J. Lotz, Dr. G. W. H. Kemper, Dr. Thos. J. Bowles, Dr. A. B. Bradbury, A. L. Kerwood, Geo. L. Lenon, F. E. Putnam, Thos. H. Kirby, Charles H. Anthony, D. H. H. Shewmaker, Theodore F. Rose, N. N. Spence, Chas. M. Kimbrough, Webster S. Richey, Thos. L. Zook, John T. Watterhouse, J. W. Ream, C. E. Jones, and R. I. Patterson. Mayor Ellis delivered a brief welcoming address and introduced the President, who spoke as follows:
My Fellow-citizens—I have known this beautiful city of yours and many of the people of this prosperous county for more than thirty years. I have known in a general way the development of your interests by almost yearly visits to the city of Muncie, but it seems to me that in these two years I have been out of the State you have made more progress than in any ten years when I was in the State. [Cheers.] I think it was in the year 1886, when I spent a night in Muncie, that my attention was drawn by some of your citizens, as darkness settled down, to a remarkable and what was then thought to be chiefly a curious red glow in your horizon. It was, if I recollect aright, about the earliest development of natural gas in Indiana, and the extent of this great field was wholly unknown. How rapidly events have crowded each other since! You have delved into the earth and have found the supply of this most adaptable and extraordinary fuel inexhaustible; and what has it done for you? No longer are you transporting coal from the distant mines to feed your furnaces. No longer are you sending the choppers into the woods to cut your trees and haul them in, that they may bring you winter heat and fuel. The factories have been coming to you. This convenient heat and serviceable fuel is found in the humblest home in Muncie. How it has added to your comfort only those who have used it know. How much it has added to your prosperity and development of manufactures here you have only begun to know. [Cheers.]
The sunlight will not more surely shed its beams on us this morning than this great tide of prosperity which has set in through this gas belt in Indiana shall go on increasing until all these cities and towns within its radius are full of busy men and humming machinery. What does all this mean? It means employment for men. It means happy and comfortable homes for an increasing population. It means an increased home market for the products of your farm. It means that the farmer will have a choice of crops, and will have consumers for perishable products of his farm at his very door. It means, if you preserve the order of your community, if this good county of Delaware continues to maintain its reputation as a law-abiding, liberty-loving, free-school-loving population [cheers], that you shall have a prosperity—an increase of riches and of human comfort that we have scarcely conceived.
And now, my friends, all over this, and above all this, and better than it all, let us keep in mind those higher things that make our country great. I do not forget that your good county sent to the war of the Union, in the gallant regiments that went from this State, a multitude of brave men to stand by the flag. [Cheers.] Some of them are with you to-day. [Applause.] Now let that love of the flag be still uppermost in your hearts. Nothing has pleased me more as I passed through some of our Western States than to see that the school children everywhere had the starry flag in their hands. [Cheers.] Let it be so here and everywhere. Let them learn to love it, to know its beauty, in order that when the time of peril comes they may be ready to defend it. [Applause.] Now to these friends, I am most grateful for your appreciative kindness, and if I shall be able, in the discharge of high and difficult duties, to maintain the respect and confidence of my fellow-citizens of Indiana, other things will take care of themselves.
[WINCHESTER, INDIANA, OCTOBER 13.]
Winchester's greeting was of the most cordial character; a large share of the population of Randolph County seemed to have turned out to do the President honor. Among the prominent citizens participating were: Leander J. Monks, Albert O. Marsh, Martin B. Miller, C. W. Moore, Dennis Kelley, W. R. Way, W. E. Miller, T. F. Moorman, Albert Canfield, John R. Engle, A. C. Beeson, E. L. Watson, Thos. S. Gordon, H. P. Kizer, J. E. Watson, John T. Chenoweth, W. H. Reinheimer, B. Hawthorne, and B. W. Simmons.