Kansas is the Athena of American States. Thirty-six years ago the Slave Oligarchy ruled this country. Fearing that the birth of new States in the West would rob it of supremacy, the Slave Power swallowed the Missouri Compromise, which had dedicated the Northwest to Freedom. The industrious North, aroused and indignant, struck quick and hard, and Kansas, full-armed, shouting the war-cry of Liberty, and nerved with invincible courage, sprang into the Union. She at once assumed a high place among the States. She was the deadly enemy of Slavery; she gave voice and potency to the demand for its abolition; and she aided in burying Secession in its unhonored grave. The war over, she became the patron, as she had been during its continuance the exemplar, of heroism, and a hundred thousand soldiers of the Union found homes within the shelter of her embracing arms. The agriculturist and the mechanic were charmed by her ample resources and inspired by her eager enterprise. Education found in her a generous patron, and to literature, art and science she has been a steadfast friend. Her pure atmosphere invigorated all. A desert disfigured the map of the Continent, and she covered it with fields of golden wheat and tasseling corn. She has extended to women the protection of generous laws and of enlarged opportunities for usefulness. In war she was valiant and indomitable, and in peace she has been intelligent, energetic, progressive and enterprising. The modern Athena, type of the great Greek goddess, is our Kansas. THE CHILD OF A GREAT ERA.