addressing you to-night for $2 and feed for my horse, I met a little child
with a bright and cheerful smile, who did not know that evolution
consisted in a progress from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous.

So you see that you never know where ignorance lurks. The hydra-headed
upas tree and bete noir of self-acting progress, is such ignorance as
that, lurking in the very shadow of magnificent educational institutions
and hard words of great cast. Nothing can be more disagreeable to the
scientist than a bete noir. Nothing gives him greater satisfaction than to
chase it up a tree or mash it between two shingles.

For this reason, as I said, it gives me great pleasure to address you on
the subject of evolution, and to go into details in speaking of it. I
could go on for hours as I have been doing, delighting you with the
intricacies and peculiarities of evolution, but I must desist. It would
please me to do so, and you would no doubt remain patiently and listen,
but your business might suffer while you were away, and so I will close,
but I hope that anyone now within the sound of my voice, and in whose
breast a sudden hunger for more light on this great subject may have
sprung up, will feel perfectly free to call on me and ask me about it or
immerse himself in the numerous tomes that I have collected from friends,
and which relate to this matter.

In closing I wish to say that I have made no statements in this paper
relative to evolution which I am not prepared to prove; and, if anything,
I have been over-conservative. For that reason I say now, that the person
who doubts a single fact as I have given it to-night, bearing upon the
great subject of evolution, will have to do so over my dumb remains.

And a man who will do that is no gentleman. I presume that many of these