the vanity of proud utterances, must be intensive as well as discursive.

I have said these things with the direct intention of glorifying the work that the men of Springfield have done in this magnificent and most promising movement-in order, if you will, to place a laurel wreath on their heads, by no means to flatter, but certainly to inspire emulation.

There is one thing, however, about the old city-state days that, let us hope has forever passed away in the larger conception of the nation and of humanity-I refer to the jealousy that existed between community and community, frustrating the broadest and best developments and sowing seeds of discord and war.

Springfield is in many ways a notable city. The name is instantly associated, everywhere in America, with a number of things representing great achievements. One of these is the "Springfield rifle." The location of the first national armory at Springfield by Washington, who chose the site in 1789, had an immediate and decisive influence on the character of development that should follow. Here was one of the first definite aggregations of skilled labor on the continent, and, as usual, where the skilled labor existed, other manufactories sprang into being. The armory itself has an enviable record of inventive genius and efficient production. The armory grounds are an ornament to the city, the new buildings are pleasing, architecturally, and the production of rifles is more than three hundred a day. In other words, Springfield alone is capable, exclusive of rifles in storage, to equip about two regiments a week with the most efficient small arm of modern warfare. That is a particularly interesting fact in this time of preparation for the unseen but always possible emergency. Everywhere, also, Springfield is as

sociated with the "Springfield Republican." Now, the building of a representative and influential journal reflects credit not only upon its founders and their successors. That it surely does. All honor to Samuel Bowles, elder, younger, and still younger. But did you ever stop to think how much of the credit for a great journal is due to the community from which it receives its primary support? If I were to name those available facts which gave the surest indication of a city's future, I would certainly give strong emphasis to the kind of journals that it fosters, and by which, in turn, it is

fostered.

Here is the true expression of its culture, its democracy, its solidarity, its moral courage and enterprise, and its harmony and civic spirit. That a city the size of Springfield should have been able to create a journal of national significance is, of course a splendid tribute to the men who did the work; it is also a most significant indication. of the future power and influence of the city itself. There are other excellent journals in Springfield (the Springfield "Union," for example) perhaps today as good, perhaps better than the old "Republican." I do not offer a judgment as to that. I am merely pointing out the spiritual significance that undoubtedly attaches to the history of the "Republican," as an indication of the quality of the city.

Springfield is a daughter of old Roxbury, the settlement of the locality having been first undertaken in 1636 by William Pynchon and a company of emigrants from that famous section of Boston. The intention of the founder was to limit the new town to fifty families. Another indication that this William Pynchon was a man of strong character and individuality is that he was compelled to return to England by the independence of his book on the Meritorious Price of Our Redemption, a volume displeasing to the powers that then were. Pynchon first named the settlement "Agawam,' but in 1641 the name was changed to Springfield, in honor of his native

uprising known to history as "Shay's rebellion," the arsenal was the object of a spirited attack.

Returning to the subject of those things for which Springfield is nationally famous, we must give a prominent place to Webster's Dictionary. This great educational work was first published in Hartford, Connecticut, but the purchase of the copyrights by the Springfield firm of George and Charles Merriam was an event of importance. Old Noah Webster made the dictionary in the first place, but the business ability of the house of Merriam, by whom it has been repeatedly revised, manufactured in the most approved fashion, and marketed so skilfully that no home need to be without its efficient guidance, has quite as much to do with. the making of Webster's dictionary as a national institution, as its first compilation.

Springfield is a publishing center of no mean importance, and this is very largely due to the success of such early publishing enterprises, and the intellectual element which they fostered. Dr. J. G. Holland, a genial writer and one of the pioneers of modern American literature that is to say of the literature emancipated from Colonial and European influences, was a Springfield man. Here lived and labored Gen. Francis A. Walker, one of America's foremost economists and a distinguished president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Edward King, David A. Wells, "Marion Harland," George S. Merriam, Clark W. Bryan, Edward Bellamy, S. B. Griffin, and Rev. A. D. Mayo, are other Springfield names that have a place in our national literature. And if there are today few readers of Bitter Sweet and Timothy Titcomb's letters,