In exchanging the rocks and snows of Sweden for the broad prairies and rich soil of Kansas, you have not only benefitted yourselves, but you have benefitted the State. I do not depreciate your native land. I know something of its history and its resources. Compared with the vast areas of the United States, the Scandinavian Peninsula is not a large territory. It includes less than three hundred thousand square miles; it has a population not exceeding six million; and its sterile soil yields grudgingly. But amid its rocks and snows a singularly hardy and energetic people have lived and worked since the dawn of civilization. From the bleak and barren hills of this Peninsula came the earliest forms of constitutional government. There, too, is found not only the oldest aristocracy of Europe, but the sturdiest, most prosperous and well-educated people. For of the Swedes, not one in a thousand is unable to read and write, and the common people are the owners of nearly the whole of the landed property in the Kingdom. This Peninsula, too, is rich in historic names. Gustavus Adolphus and Charles XII justly rank among the greatest rulers and soldiers the world has ever known. Among statesmen, Oxenstiern deserves his world-wide fame; and among artists, there is no name brighter than that of Thorwaldsen. In literature, the writings of Tegner, Fredrika Bremer, Carlen and Bjornson are as familiar to English-speaking people as to the Swedes. The mystic philosophy of Emanuel Swedenborg has interested and entertained the students of all countries. And among singers, what land or age has ever produced voices so rich in melody as those of Jenny Lind or Christine Neillson? At our Centennial Exhibition, in 1876, I spent many delightful days in the Swedish department, and I remember with still vivid interest its unequalled specimens of wood-carving, and the paintings in which the effect of moonlight on the water was reproduced with such marvelous fidelity and skill. The fair-haired people of the Scandinavian Peninsula have indeed stamped their impress upon the history, the literature, the arts, the industries, and the laws and government of the whole civilized world, and always the influence exerted by their teaching and example has been wholesome and beneficent.