Ladies and gentlemen: This day is auspicious. Set apart by governor and president for universal thanksgiving, our grateful hearts confirm the consecration. Though we have not been permitted to parade our democratic roosters in jubilant print, we may now lead them from their innocuous desuetude, and making them the basis of this day’s feast, gather about them a company that in cordial grace shall be excelled by none—not even that which invests the republican turkey, whose steaming thighs shall be slipped to-day in Indianapolis, and attacking them with an appetite that comes from abounding health, consign them to that digestion that waits on a conscience void of offense. We give thanks to-day that the Lord God Almighty, having led us from desolation into plenty, from poverty into substance, from passion into reason, and from estrangement into love—having brought the harvests from the ashes, and raised us homes from our ruins, and touched our scarred land all over with beauty and with peace—permits us to assemble here to-day and rejoice amid the garnered heaps of our treasure. Your visitors give thanks because, coming to a city that from deep disaster has risen with energy and courage unequaled, and witnessing an exposition that in the sweep of its mighty arms and the splendor of its gathered riches surpasses all we have attempted, they find all sense of rivalry blotted out in wondering admiration, and from hearts that know not envy or criticism, bid you God-speed to even higher achievement, and to full and swift harvesting of the prosperity to gain which you have builded so bravely and so wisely.