ple virtues and habits which
are usually associated with that primitive garb. I need not tell you
what the country now is, and what the habits and the garments of its
people now are, or that the expenditure, per capita, of the general
government has increased fifteen-fold. But I have witnessed and taken a
deep interest in every step of the marvellous development and progress
which have characterized this century beyond all the centuries which
have gone before.

"Measured by the achievements of the years I have seen, I am one of the
oldest men who have ever lived; but I do not feel old, and I propose to
give you the receipt by which I have preserved my youth.

"I have always given a friendly welcome to new ideas, and I have
endeavored not to feel too old to learn; and thus, though I stand here
with the snows of so many winters upon my head, my faith in human
nature, my belief in the progress of man to a better social condition,
and especially my trust in the ability of men to establish and maintain
self-government, are as fresh and as young as when I began to travel the
path of life.

"While I have always recognized that the object of business is to make
money in an honorable manner, I have endeavored to remember that the
object of life is to do good. Hence I have been ready to engage in all
new enterprises, and, without incurring debt, to risk in their promotion
the means which I had acquired, provided they seemed to me calculated to
advance the general good. This will account for my early attempt to
perfect the steam engine, for my attempt to construct the first American
locomotive, for my connection with the telegraph in a course of efforts
to unite our country with the European world, and for my recent efforts
to solve the problem of economical steam navigation on the canals; to
all of which you have so kindly referred. It happens to but few men to
change the current of human progress, as it did to Watt, to Fulton, to
Stephenson, and to Morse; but most men may be ready to welcome laborers
to a new field of usefulness, and to clear the road for their progress.

"This I have tried to do, as well in the perfecting and execution of
their ideas as in making such provision as my means have permitted for
the proper education of the young mechanics and citizens of my native
city, in order to fit them for the reception of new ideas, social,
mechanical, and scientific--hoping thus to economize and expand the
intellectual a