Addresses: by John A. Martin. Delivered in Kansas.

by John Alexander Martin

The wonderful growth and marvelous prosperity of Kansas, unprecedented in the history of American States, is not alone due to soil, climate, resources, and topography. Other States have soils as productive, climates as healthful, resources more varied, and landscapes as lovely, as ours. The unexampled development and prosperity of Kansas is the logical result of her splendid citizenship, and of the intellectual and moral forces this citizenship has set at work in every township of the State. Our pioneer settlers laid the foundations of a school house and a church by the side of their first rude homes, and from that day to this the idea thus planted has grown and spread and flourished with the development of the commonwealth. The people of Kansas may have been parsimonious in some things, but they have never stinted their expenditures to provide, for all the children of the State, the most ample educational facilities.

A few days ago the oldest and most richly endowed college in this country celebrated the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of its foundation. For more than two centuries Harvard has been the pride of the great State within whose borders it is located, and yet it has never received, from Massachusetts, as much money as the young State of Kansas has appropriated, during the past twenty-five years, to establish and support this University.

The older generations of Kansans, however, hold a divided allegiance. They love and are proud of the State of their adoption, but memories of the fields and hills and streams of their birthplace are still singing in their hearts. The young men and women who come up to Mount Oread to be equipped for the battle of life, will be, as a rule, natives of the State, and attached to it by the undivided ties of childhood’s memories and the pride and faith of maturer years. Generation after generation of these sons and daughters of Kansas will be inspired, within these walls, with higher aims, nobler motives, and larger and broader views of human life and endeavor.

We meet, to-day, to formally celebrate another step in the growth and progress of the State University—to dedicate this beautiful building, the home, for all future time, of the Department of Natural History. Very properly the building is to bear the name of the learned, devoted and enthusiastic teacher to whose energy, industry and zeal the State is indebted for the treasures that are gathered within its walls. I discharge a very pleasant duty, gentlemen of the Board of Regents, when, in the name of the State, I commit to your keeping this stately edifice. See that the purpose of the Legislature, in ordering it, is fully carried out. Study the needs of this great educational institution, and make them known. Strive to keep it, in all its departments, fully abreast with the growth and progress of the State. In this endeavor you can, I am confident, rely on the cordial and generous coöperation of the intelligent people of Kansas, and the hearty support of their chosen representatives in the Legislature.

ADDRESS.

Address of welcome to the State Teachers’ Association, delivered in Representative Hall, Topeka, December 28th, 1886.

Mr. Chairman: Readers of Kansas newspapers and students of Kansas affairs cannot have failed to notice the fact that, during the hot and dusty months of July and August, many vocations in this State are practically abandoned. Courts adjourn, and judges and lawyers flit away to the mountains, the woods, or the lakes; churches are closed, and ministers seek the peace and quiet of rural sights and scenes; physicians discover that their patients can get along without them for a while, and take a vacation; and men engaged in every department of commerce or industry abandon, if it is possible for them to do so, the cares, perplexities and toils of their employments, for a brief summer sojourn amid fresh fields and pastures new.

But during this season of sweltering heat and stifling dust, as the same readers or observers must also have noticed, there is one class of men and women who, having then a legal holiday, do not utilize it to “loaf and possess their souls.” In every county of Kansas these men and women assemble, not to rest, but to work; not for pleasure, but to study; not to get away from the worries, the troubles and the tasks of their profession, but to fit themselves more thoroughly for its duties and responsibilities.

I hear it said, now and then, Mr. President, that the profession of the educator is not progressing as are many other vocations, or that the schoolmasters and mistresses of twenty-five or fifty years ago were more proficient or competent than are those of to-day. Against such thoughtless or reckless assertions, I put the convincing fact of these midsummer schools, in which the teachers of Kansas assemble to study, to compare notes, and to be instructed in the best methods of instructing others. Men and women capable of such devotion to their work as these meetings illustrate, need no excuse or defense.

And these are the men and women I am now to welcome to the capital. I discharge the duty assigned me, Mr. President, with sincere pleasure. Very few, if any, of the meetings held in this room are composed of people who occupy so important a place in the every-day work and growth of the State as do those now assembled here, and none, I am sure, represent a more useful or honorable calling. Teachers of Kansas, I believe you understand these facts. I believe you appreciate, in full measure, the dignity and importance of your vocation, and that you are striving, earnestly and laboriously, to fit yourselves for its great duties and vast responsibilities. I trust your sessions will be alike pleasant and profitable, and that you may one and all return to your work refreshed and benefitted by this fraternal intercourse with one another. In this faith and in this hope, I greet you, and most cordially welcome you to the capital of the State.