relieved of the responsibility of looking after the work of supplies for funerals and sabbath services. Meantime, I had done some successful canvassing for some valuable books, but now laid upon the shelf by sickness, my little salary at the Soldier's Home cut off, and being unable to do any canvassing for the sale of books, things from my human standpoint looked a little dubious, but thus far God has been better to us than our fears; and our friends have shown themselves friendly in many substantial ways. At the celebration of our golden wedding one year ago, many of our friends outside of Grand Rapids sent their congratulations in substantial form, which, added to those of our city friends, netted over three hundred dollars, which made us feel almost as rich as did Father Clark, when his little dowry came from England, but we did not pray, "Lord keep us rich," but we did pray, "Lord make us worthy of such friendships." At the time of our last

pioneer meeting in June, one year ago, I was unable to attend, and thought it quite probable that I should never look into your faces again, until I should greet you on the other shore. But I am here, in much better health than I enjoyed two months ago, and from present indications I am encouraged to hope, that by the time of our next annual reunion, "Richard will be himself again." But what the future has in store for me, no finite mind can tell, but I'll try and keep on in the service of my Master, who has borne with my weaknesses for these fifty-two years; and I am sure I shall find mercy at his hands, when he comes to sign my release, whether this year or the next, or many years thereafter; and in the sweet bye and bye I shall hope for a reunion with all of my pioneer friends who have gone before, or may go before, and all who may come after my transfer to the church triumphant, which is without spot before the throne of God.

PROGRESS IN TRANSPORTATION AND MAILS IN THE LAST FIFTY YEARS.

BY C. T. MITCHELL.

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen-I have a short paper to read on the cost of transportation back in the forties and at the present time, showing the great progress that has been made in cheapening transportation in the last fifty years.

I went to Hillsdale to live in the spring of 1843, first of May. The Michigan Southern railroad was completed there in October of that year by the State of Michigan, at a cost of about $1,400,000, with wooden superstructure and flat rails. The superstructure consisted of, first, a mud sill six by ten inches, on that cross ties about three by six inches, in which a groove was cut, and a wooden rail five by seven inches placed with the inner edge champered off, and to which was spiked down a flat iron bar three-quarters of an inch in thickness and two inches wide.

The State simply transported the produce and merchandise but did not handle it. The State charged for hauling wheat to Monroe, sixtyseven miles, twelve cents per bushel.

I owned and operated a large warehouse and there were five others in town. The warehouseman got three cents for storing and shipping, one cent for buying, which, added to the twelve cents freight, made sixteen cents, and three cents for storage at Monroe made nineteen cents, the cost to the farmer to take his wheat from the team at Hillsdale and place it on board of a vessel at Monroe, sixty-seven miles. A load for a freight car was one hundred bushels and that in bags.

Now, what have the great railroads, or as they say, the great monopolies, done for the farmers? They take, today, his wheat from Chicago to New York all the way by rail, and deliver it in Liverpool for less than it cost to transport it from a team in Hillsdale and place it on board of a vessel at Monroe forty-five years ago, and yet they think, or seem to think, these great railroads their enemies, and are ready to make war on them in every possible way. The railroads barely get justice from a jury of farmers.

Now another item of progress is shown more completely in transporting the mails. At the time I speak of, the Great Western mail from New York and New England came up by stage, along the south shore of Lake Erie in winter, by boat in summer; to Hillsdale by rail from Monroe, and was transported to Chicago on the boot of a stage for six years. Now there passes every evening a fast mail train of eight cars with twenty or thirty postal clerks, and another on the Air Line, besides all the mail carried over the Michigan Central.

These two items in our commercial history show the progress this State has made more perfectly than any other I know of. Here was a railroad built by the people themselves, the State of Michigan, and charging the farmer more for transporting and handling his wheat sixty-seven miles, than it now, this seventh day of June, 1893, costs to

transport it one thousand miles by rail, and three thousand miles by steamer to Liverpool or London, and yet the farmer appears to think these great corporations their worst enemies, are ready to fight them on all occasions.

I suppose it to be true that the two great railroads of this State, the Michigan Central and the Michigan Southern, are managed by as hightoned, honorable business men, as any other great business interests in the country; that any party having a just claim is sure to get a prompt and honorable settlement. It only discloses an unhealthy public sentiment, that has taken hold of the public mind, which has largely been built up by the unthinking public press and ought to be corrected.

The Michigan Southern was sold to a company in the winter of 1846 and 1847 for $500,000, having cost the State $1,400,000. The company had ten years to pay it in, ten per cent down and ten per cent per year payable in the State indebtedness, which was then worth but forty-two cents on the dollar. The late Henry Waldron, John P. Cook, C. W. Ferris and myself took $10,000 each of the stock. At that time we could not have raised $10,000 all together but we still thought it a good business venture. My first $1,000 that I was to pay down cost me $420. The next year the road earned enough to pay the ten per cent, the third year we had to pay eight of the ten and then the road was sold, or rather a majority of the stock, to a new company. Soon after arrangements were made for its extension, supposing we would be called upon to pay the full amount of our stock we sold out, but made handsomely on our investment.

At the time I speak of, the south part of the county was a substantial wilderness. Land three miles from town sold for three dollars to five dollars per acre.

COMPARATIVE SKETCHES OF E. B. WARD, JAMES F. JOY, LEWIS CASS, AND WM. WOODBRIDGE.

BY FRED CARLISLE.

In undertaking a comparison of men with each other for the purpose of determining what benefit the world, or their fellow men, have derived by reason of their having lived, demands an analysis as to the

prominent characteristics manifested to produce the results achieved. Bonaparte declared that "circumstances make men," and the question is often mooted whether character be the creation of circumstances or circumstances the creation of character. If we assume that circumstances create character we eliminate from it that vital causative energy which is its essential characteristic, or to assert that circumstances are the creation of character is to endow character with power not only to create but to furnish the material for creation. The results of both these processes, it seems to us, would not be character but caricature. We, therefore, must admit that circumstances furnish the nutriment for character, or the food which converts it into blood which is the process of assimilation and supplies individual power to act upon circumstances. In all the departments of life success depends upon a knowledge preceding all assimilating of the circumstances connected with each department.

Man standing for the thing, mastered or utilized, all its forces are in himself as a personal power and a personal intelligence. Character being the embodiment of things in persons, it is obviously limited in its sphere to facts and laws it has made its own, out of that sphere it is comparatively feeble.

Many able lawyers, merchants and generals have been blunderers as statesmen, thus injustice is often done to the real merits of eminent men who have been enticed out of their strongholds of character to venture into unaccustomed fields of exertion where their incapacity is soon detected. But confine a characteristic man to the matters he has really mastered and there is in him no blundering, no indecision, no uncertainty, but a straight decisive activity. "Sure as insight and rapid as instinct," which is not to be imposed upon by nonsense of any kind, however prettily you may bedizen it in inapplicable eloquence. The perfection of character depends on the man's embodying the facts and laws of his profession or avocation or object to such a degree of intensity that power and intelligence are combined.

For knowledge unassimilated does not form part of the mind but is only attached to it and often blunders as badly as ignorance itself. While character, in its intrinsic nature is the embodiment of things in persons; the quality which most distinguishes men of character from men of passions and opinions, is persistency and the power to continue in its exercise until the end sought is accomplished. If we scrutinize the lives of persons who have become eminent in any department of action, we find it is not so much their brilliancy or fertility as their constancy of effort that makes them great. The heads of such men are

not merely filled with ideas, purposes and plans, but the primary characteristics of their natures and secret of their success is that labor cannot weary nor obstacles discourage, them.

The distinction between the strong and the weak is that one persists, the other hesitates, falters, trifles and at last collapses. We have thus attempted to define the combination of the elements of human nature, and to indicate the great vital fact in human affairs that all influential powers in all departments of practical, intellectual, and moral energy, is that expression of character by forcible persisting and calculable persons, who have grown up into statures more or less colossal through an assimilation of material or spiritual realities.

This fact makes production the test and measure of power; it also imprints on production the mental and moral imperfections of that power and with a kind of sullen sublimity declares, "That as a man is so shall his work be." The possession of these elements and the results reached by their exhibition is demonstrated and exemplified in the lives and acts of those men to whom Michigan is especially indebted for its present prosperous condition.

Among those names first associated with the discovery and first settlement of Michigan are those of Sieur de la Salle and de la Motte Cadillac.

The former was born at Rouen, France, in 1643, of an honorable family, and named Robert Cavelier. He was educated among the Jesuits, but being dissatisfied with theology he chose that of science, the pursuit of which led him at the age of twenty-three to sail for Canada, or New France, where he first met Frontenac, then governor, between whom a strong friendship was formed which continued until the latter's recall to France. Parkman says, he was a man full of schemes of ambition and gain. Other of his biographers insist that the love of money was foreign to his nature, but was secondary to his desire to discover a passage to China across the continent, and in the event of failure to anticipate the Spaniards and English and colonize the great west with Frenchmen, to develop its resources, make friends with the Indian tribes, to obtain control of the mouth of the Mississippi, and thus secure an outlet for a vast trade which should redound to the benefit of his native country. The last would seem to be, in the main, the ruling object of his life, for, while he did not find a direct route to China, he explored the whole southwest to the mouth of the Mississippi and established posts in Michigan and at numerous intervening points between it and the mouth of the Mississippi and took possession of all the vast territory watered by the latter stream in the