"Mr. H. Dudley Coleman then moved that a copy of the resolutions be appropriately written and framed, and presented to Captain Glazier; and that a committee of three be appointed to prepare the same.
"The resolutions were unanimously adopted, when Dr. Copes appointed as the committee Messrs. Coleman, Walker, and Blanchard.
"At the conclusion of the meeting, Mr. Coleman escorted Captain Glazier to the Washington Artillery Arsenal, and introduced him to Colonel J. B. Richardson, commanding the battalion, who extended to Captain Glazier the hospitalities of the battalion during his stay in the city."
BEFORE THE MISSOURI HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
Captain Glazier returned to Saint Louis from New Orleans, having engaged to deliver a lecture in that city on the "Pioneers of the Mississippi." On his voyage down the river and visit to the city, he was unable to remain long enough to fulfil the engagement, as winter was rapidly approaching, and it was expedient to reach the Gulf as soon as possible. Moreover, he wished to present one of his canoes—the Itasca—to the Missouri Historical Society, in return for the hospitality he had received during his previous brief visit; and it was arranged that the presentation should take place on the night of the lecture. Accordingly, on the evening of January fourteenth, 1882, an audience consisting of members of the Historical Society, the Academy of Sciences, clergy, officers and teachers of the public schools, and the several boat clubs of the city, assembled at Mercantile Library Hall, to listen to his lecture on the pioneer explorers of the Great River, and to witness the presentation of the Itasca.
At eight o'clock, Captain Glazier, accompanied by Judge Albert Todd, Vice-President of the Historical Society, appeared on the platform, and the Judge introduced the lecturer in the following terms, as reported in the local press:
"Mark Twain wrote that in his Oriental travels he visited the grave of our common ancestor, Adam, and, as a filial mourner, he copiously wept over it. To me the grave of our common ancestress, Eve, would be more worthy of my filial affection, but, instead of weeping over it, I should proudly rejoice by reason of her irrepressible desire for knowledge. She boldly gratified this desire, and thereby lifted Adam up from the indolent, browsing life that he seemed disposed and content to pass in the 'Garden,' and gave birth to that spirit of inquiry and investigation which is developing and elevating their posterity to 'man's pride of place'—'a little lower than the angels'—by keeping them ever discontented with the status quo, and constantly pressing on to the 'mark of their high calling' beneath the blazing legend 'Excelsior.' It is this ceaseless unrest of the spirit, one of the greatest evidences of the soul's immortality, that is continually contracting the boundaries of the unknown in geography and astronomy, in physics and metaphysics, in all their varied departments. Of those pre-eminently illustrating it in geography were Jason and his Argonauts; Columbus, De Gama, and Magellan; De Soto, Marquette, and La Salle; Cabot and Cook; Speke, Baker, Livingstone, and Franklin; and our own Ledyard, Lewis, Clarke, Kane, Hall, and Stanley. And this evening will appear before you another of these irrepressible discontents who would know what is still hidden, at any risk or privation.
"Impelled by this spirit of enterprise, in search of truth, Captain Willard Glazier has discovered, at last, the true source of our grand and peerless river, the 'Father of Waters,' down which he has floated and paddled in frail canoes, a distance of more than three thousand miles, to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico. One of these canoes is now placed here in your view, and will be presented to-night by its navigator to our Historical Society. "Nearly two hundred years ago La Salle discovered the mouth of the Mississippi, yet only now in this year of grace, 1881, was ascertained its true fountain source.
"This, the latest achievement of Captain Glazier, is only in the natural course of his antecedents. Born as late as 1841, he has already gone through the experiences of the Adamic labors of a tiller of the soil, the hard toils of the student and of the successful teacher; of the dashing and brilliant cavalry officer in the Union army through the whole period of our late war, from its disastrous beginning to its successful ending; of the sufferings of capture and imprisonment in the notorious 'Libby,' and other prisons, and of a daring and perilous escape from their cruel walls; of an adventurous tourist on horseback through the most civilized and savage portions of our continent, beginning with the feet of his horse in the waters of the Atlantic, and ending with their splash in the waters of the Pacific. He delivered lectures along his route wherever a civilized audience could be collected, and suffered capture by the Indians, with all its sensational romance and hideous prospects.