It seemed as if our neighbors had conspired to make the town ready for my distinguished visitors, and I could see that they enjoyed the peace of it, the friendliness of the park-like streets, the sight of well-kept homes set in gardens, and the cordial greetings of the people we met. Their appreciation of all they saw before reaching the house, and their evident delight in the rooms prepared for them, not to mention their astonishment at finding their trunks awaiting them there, afforded me not only pleasure, but a great sense of relief; I felt that the race was won. I had faith to believe that they would be happy in our town of six thousand inhabitants, which is not unlike other places of the same size. It has its public park, two or three shopping streets, churches, schoolhouses, a few factories large and small, clubs, lodges, and all the things of which like towns may legitimately boast; yet it has a background peculiarly its own. It was founded by an intrepid pioneer who brought a colony of New Englanders from the hills of Massachusetts to this treeless prairie, and with the imperious will of his race said: "Let there be a town!" And lumber was carted over miles of deep mud, cabins were built and there was a town. And again he said: "Let there be a railroad!" And he diverted the course of a great railroad system miles out of its way, and there was a railroad. And he said: "There must be no saloon in this place!" So more than half a century before strong drink was acknowledged to be a social and physical foe, he had seen its true nature and put prohibition into every deed of real estate, thus making it impossible for liquor to gain a foothold. Years passed and he said: "Let there be a college!" and he brought one across the state, and there was a college; a young, infant thing just started by Christian missionaries who had come from the East, each of them to plant a church, all of them to plant a college. This infant educational institution was put into its rude cradle in the midst of an unshaded campus, and when it had grown to generous size, with buildings to house it and trees to shade it, a cyclone swept the campus bare, and instead of a joyous Commencement, which was but a few days distant, there were funerals and desolation, wreck and ruin. On a pile of débris sat the same pioneer with a determined smile playing upon his face, and at once, while the tears upon the mourners' cheeks were still wet, he and others like him began rebuilding the town and the college. Those men now "rest from their labor" in that bit of rolling prairie saved from the plowmen and the harvester, and consecrated to hold our dead until the great day.