ves, I
realize more fully each day that my personal interest in every step
toward its final success, must necessarily be quite equal to your own.

"I am delighted with the idea of being present at your first Arbor day
celebration. I hope there is to be in the order of exercises an oration
which you are to deliver. If so, I know you will not disappoint me! I
am prepared to prophesy that you will do yourself justice, do credit to
Solaris and at the same time you will cover the subject with a halo of
glory. Such a result seems assured when I consider the extraordinary
interest which was aroused by your lectures on forestry. This signal
conquest of your eloquence has gratified my pride very much. I am
strongly impressed with the vast importance of this tree-planting
school, which you are about to institute at Solaris. The success which
you have won in the preliminary work is so promising, that I am sure you
have undertaken a task which is worthy of your genius. In my judgment,
you have already demonstrated your ability to accomplish many wonderful
things. Great opportunities are before you. By the force of your logic,
by the earnestness of your eloquence, you will be able to instill and to
permanently fix in the minds of our people--both parents and
children--the true progressive principles of American citizenship. You
will thus enable them to perceive the serious import of the
responsibilities which, like a mantle of power, descends upon them, as
the representative working units of this great republic. You can so
inspire them that they will be eager and proud to take up with honor the
burden of these responsibilities. You can so change and elevate the
lives of these people and a multitude of others, that first they shall
become masters of themselves; later, masters of the republic; through
the controlling force, the imperial dominancy of scientifically
developed, symmetrical minds; whose intellectual, ethical,
inspirational, logical and constructive power, combined as an elevating
agency, shall raise the republic of the future to still more commanding
heights. To accomplish these things, is the glorious beginning of a
great career! In visions of your life work, it comes to me that this
preparatory work on the farm is but the introduction to a more important
mission, in the vastly wider field of a near future. In this coming work
we shall stand side by side. Hand in hand, with hearts united by the
bonds of a supreme love, w