has been made to blossom as the rose. Those were pleasant times, as we
look upon them now, just fading into the dim and shadowy past, but
they were times of toil and privation. The arms of the men of those
times were nerved by the hope of the future, and the spirit that
sustained them was that of faith in the fact that the promise of
reward for their labor was sure.

"Do the men of the present day ever think what a gigantic labor that
was of clearing away those old forests? Contemplate a wilderness,
reaching from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, from the great lakes
and the majestic St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, every acre of
which was covered with tall trees which had to be cut away one by one,
not with some great machine which mowed them down in broad swaths like
the grass of a meadow, but by a single arm and a single axe. Talk
about the Pyramids, the Chinese Wall, the great canals of the earth!
They sink into utter insignificance when compared with the prodigious
labor of clearing away the American forests, and spreading out green
fields where our fathers found only a limitless wilderness of woods.
The sons of these men who performed that labor, in my judgment, have a
better patent to preferment and honors than those who come from other
lands to claim their inheritance after it has been thus perfected by
such toil and hardships, and dangers as the history of the world
cannot parallel."

"I think, if I remember rightly," said the Dr., "you set out to tell a
bear story. You are now indulging in a sermon on progress. Allow me to
call your attention to the bear."

"I appeal to the court," said Spalding, addressing Smith and myself,
"against this interruption."