yonder, I saw what seemed to be a mere web of gossamer, a bare hand's
breadth along the horizon. It seemed as if I might have swept it away
with my hand if I could have reached it, so airy and light it was in the
distance, but when I came close to it to-night I found that it was one
of the greatest structures that human intellect has ever devised. I saw
it thrilling and vibrating with every energy of our pulsating, modern
life. At a distance it looked as if the vessels nearest would strike it,
full head, and carry it away. When I reached it I saw that it was so
high, so vast, that the traffic of your great stream passed easily
backward and forward under it. So it is with some of these problems.
They may appear very small to you, ladies and gentlemen, or to us, when
seen at a distance--as though merely a hand-sweep would get rid of them;
but I tell you they are too vast to be moved easily.

There is one that with us overshadows all the rest. The great
Anglo-Saxon race in the section of this country containing the
inhabitants of the South understands better than you do the gravity of
that great problem which confronts them. It is "like the pestilence that
walketh in darkness, the destruction that wasteth at noonday." It
confronts us all the day; it is the spectre that ever sits beside our
bed. No doubt we make mistakes about it; no doubt there are outbreaks
growing out of some phases of it that astound, and shock, and stun you,
as they do ourselves. But believe me, the Anglo-Saxon race has set
itself, with all its power, to face it and to overcome it; to solve it
in some way, and in the wisest way. Have patience and it will be solved.
Time is the great solver, and time alone. If you knew the problem as I
do, my words would have more weight with you than they have. I cannot,
perhaps, expect you even to understand entirely what I am saying to you,
but when I tell you that it is the greatest problem that at present
faces the South, as it has done for the last thirty years, I am saying