"In the year of our Lord 1900, there will be two million people in Kansas, with cities like Providence and Worcester—perhaps like Chicago and Cincinnati. She will have more miles of railroad than Maryland, Virginia, and both the Carolinas can now boast. Her land will be worth twenty dollars an acre, and her total wealth will be five hundred millions of money. Six hundred thousand children will learn in her schools. What schools, newspapers, libraries, meeting-houses! Yes, what families of educated, happy and religious men and women! There will be a song of Freedom all around the Slave States, and in them Slavery itself will die." Read in the light of the present, these eloquent words of Theodore Parker seem touched with prophetic fire. The ideal Kansas he saw, looking through the mists of the future, is the real Kansas of to-day. The marvelous growth, the splendid prosperity, the potent intellectual and moral energies, and the happy and contented life he predicted, are all around us. At the threshold of the year A. D. 1886, fifteen years before the limit of his prophecy, Kansas has cities like Providence and Worcester; has more than double the railway mileage Maryland, Virginia, and both the Carolinas could then boast; has land worth, not twenty, but fifty and a hundred dollars an acre; has wealth far exceeding five hundred million dollars; has schools, newspapers, libraries and churches rivaling those of New England; and has 1,300,000 happy, prosperous and intelligent people. The prophecy has been fulfilled, but the end is not yet. The foundations of the State, like those of its Capitol, have just been completed. The stately building, crowned with its splendid dome, is yet to be reared. Smiling and opulent fields, busy and prosperous cities and towns, are still attracting the intelligent, the enterprising and the ambitious of every State and country. The limits that bound the progress and development of Kansas cannot now be gauged or guessed. We have land, homes, work and plenty for millions more; and for another quarter of a century, at least, our State will continue to grow. For we are yet at the threshold and in the dawn of it all. We are just beginning to realize what a great people can accomplish, whom "love of country moveth, example teacheth, company comforteth, emulation quickeneth, and glory exalteth." TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES 1. Silently corrected simple spelling, grammar, and typographical errors. 2. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed. 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Address delivered at the quarter-centennial celeb, by John Alexander Martin