[TULARE, CALIFORNIA, APRIL 25.]
Tulare was reached at 10 o'clock. Nearly 6,000 people awaited the President's arrival. Capt. Thomas H. Thompson, E. W. Holland, and Hon. O. B. Taylor met the distinguished travellers. The other members of the committee were: Hon. John. G. Eckles, Hon. J. O. Lovejoy, I. N. Wright, J. Wolfrom, E. T. Cosper, Hon. J. W. Davis, Sam Richardson, Dr. C. F. Taggart, M. W. Cooley, H. H. Francisco, C. C. Brock, James Scoon, D. O. Hamman, J. L. Bachelder, R. B. Bohannan, James Morton, A. O. Erwin, J. B. Zumwalt, Hon. E. De Witt, Alfred Fay, J. H. Whited, J. A. Goble, W. L. Blythe, M. M. Burnett, Scott Bowles, R. L. Reid, F. M. Shultz, B. F. Moore, F. Rosenthal, Henry Peard, Sam Blythe, J. A. Allen, E. Lathrop, E. J. Cox, J. F. Boller, Hon. G. S. Berry, R. Linder, Miles Ellsworth, R. N. Hough, C. F. Hall, Dr. E. W. Dutcher, M. Premo, Hon. John Roth, A. Borders, T. W. Maples, E. D. Lake, S. S. Ingham, D. W. Madden, Sam Newell, M. C. Hamlin, W. C. Ambrose, H. C. Faber, C. Talbot, L. E. Schoenemann, M. C. Hunt, G. W. Zartman, A. P. Hall, J. H. Woody, Isaac Roberts, Capt. E. Oakford, J. C. Gist, H. F. Tandy, C. F. Stone, and Dr. B. M. Alford.
The committee escorted the presidential party to a unique platform constructed inside the stump of a gigantic redwood tree, and there was ample seating capacity upon the platform for the entire party; about the base of the great stump were arranged boxes of elegant flowers. Mrs. Harrison and the other ladies in the party were escorted to the stand by Mrs. E. B. Oakford, Mrs. T. H. Thompson, Mrs. G. J. Reading, and Mrs. Patrick, of Visalia. Gettysburg Post, G. A. R., and Company E, from Visalia, were a guard of honor to the Chief Magistrate.
Governor Markham introduced the President, who spoke as follows:
My Friends—This seems to be a very happy and smiling audience, and I am sure that the gladness which is in your hearts and in your faces does not depend at all upon the presence of this little company of strangers who tarry with you for a moment. It is born of influences and conditions that are permanent. It comes of the happy sunshine and sweet air that are over your fields, and still more from the contentment, prosperity, and love and peace that are in your households. California has been spoken of as a wonderland, and everywhere we have gone something new, interesting, and surprising has been presented to our observation. There has been but one monotone in our journey, and that is the monotone of universal welcome from all your people. [Cheers.] Everything else has been new and exceptional at every stop.
My own heart kindles with gladness, my own confidence in American interests is firmer and more settled as I mingle with the great masses of our people. You are here in a great agricultural region, reclaimed from desert waste by the skill and energy of man—a region populated by a substantial, industrious, thrifty, God-fearing people, a people devoted to the institutions under which they live, proud to be Americans, feeling that the American birthright is the best heritage they can hand down to their children; proud of the great story of our country from the time of independence to this day; devoted to institutions that give the largest liberty to the individual and at the same time secure social order. Here is the firm foundation upon which our hopes for future security rest. What but our own neglect, what but our own unfaithfulness, can put in peril either our national institutions or our local organizations of government? True to ourselves, true to those principles which we have embodied in our Government, there is to the human eye no danger that can threaten the firm base of our institutions.
I am glad to see and meet these happy children. I feel like kneeling to them as the future sovereigns of this country, and feel as if it were a profanation to tread upon these sweet flowers that they have spread in my pathway. God bless them, every one; keep them in the lives they are to live from all that is evil, fill their little hearts with sunshine and their mature lives with grace and usefulness. [Cheers.]