[COLTON, CALIFORNIA, APRIL 22.]
At Colton the presidential party were enthusiastically greeted by several thousand people. The Citizens' Committee comprised A. B. Miner, Chairman; Dr. Fox, J. B. Shepardson, Wilson Hays, W. H. Wright, F. M. Hubbard, Dr. Hutchinson, H. B. Smith, J. W. Davis, S. M. Goddard, J. B. Hanna, Captain Topp, W. W. Wilcox, M. A. Murphy, Prof. Mathews, R. A. Kuhn, C. B. Hamilton, J. M. White, Dr. Sprecher, Geo. E. Slaughter, R. F. Franklin, E. A. Pettijohn, E. E. Thompson, Dan Swartz, R. M. McKie, Wm. McCully and Proctor McCann. The committee appointed to wait on Mrs. Harrison were: Mesdames Hubbard, Button, Shepardson, Fuller, Gilbert, Shibley, Hebbard, and Wright. Twelve school-girls presented as many baskets of oranges to the lady of the White House.
The President addressed the assemblage and said:
My Fellow-citizens—We have travelled now something more than 3,500 miles. They have been 3,500 miles of cordial greeting from my fellow-citizens; they have been 3,500 miles of perpetual talk. It would require a brain more fertile in resources, more diversified in its operations than the State of California in its richness and productions, to say something original or interesting at each one of these stopping places; but I can say always with a warm heart to my fellow-citizens who greet me so cordially, who look to me out of such kindly faces, I thank you; I am your servant in all things that will conduce to the general prosperity and happiness of the American people.
Remote from us of the far East in distance, we are united to you not only by the ties of a common citizenship, by the reverence and honor we joyfully give to the one flag, but by those interchanges of emigration which have brought so many of the people of the older States to you. At every station where I have stopped since entering California some Hoosier has reached up his hand to greet me [laughter and cheers], and the omnipresent Ohio man, of course, I have found everywhere. I was assured by these gentlemen that they were making their full contributions to the development of your country, and that they have possessed themselves of their fair share of it.
I have been greatly pleased this morning to come out of the land of the desert and the drifting sand into this land of homes and smiling women and bright children. I have been glad to see these beautiful gardens and these fertile fields, and to know that you are now, by the economical collection and distribution of the waters of the hills, making all these valleys to blossom like the garden of Eden. We do not come to spy the land with any view of dispossessing you, as the original spies went into Palestine. We come simply to exchange friendly greetings, and we shall hope to carry away nothing that does not belong to us. [Cheers.]
If we shall leave your happy and prosperous State freighted with your good-will and love, as we shall leave ours with you, it will be a happy exchange. [Cheers.]