[21] The Rev. Dr. Theodore Cuyler.

[22] Address of the Bishops of the M. E. Church, 1900.


How marvellously the application of steam as a motive
power has united once widely separated regions. So swiftly
have the changes come and so quickly have we adapted ourselves
to them that it is difficult to realize the magnitude of the
transformation that has been achieved. We can ride from
Pittsburg to Philadelphia in eight hours and to Calcutta in
twenty-two days. The journey across our own continent is no
longer marked by the ox-cart and the campfire and the bones
of perished expeditions. It is simply a pleasant trip of less
than a week, and in an emergency in August, 1903, Henry P.
Lowe travelled from New York to Los Angeles, 3,241 miles, in
seventy-three hours and twenty-one minutes. Populous states
covered with a network of railway and telegraph lines invite
the nations of the world to join them in celebrating at St.
Louis the ``Purchase'' of a region which a hundred years ago
was as foreign to the American people as the Philippines now
are. The Rev. Dr. Calvin Mateer, who in 1863 was six
months in reaching Chefoo, China, on a voyage from whose
hardships his wife never fully recovered, returned in a comfortable
journey of one month in 1902. To-day, for all practical
purposes, China is nearer New York than California once
was.