Washington Irving tells the story of how one of the early settlers in the State of New York, not a very industrious person, walked out on the Catskill Mountains on a shooting expedition, and met with a party who were playing at skittles. They invited him to have some whisky and water, which he accepted, and immediately fell asleep, and at the close of half a century awoke. His faculties were in precisely the same condition as when he fell asleep, but the world had progressed around him. He went home and found those whom he had left young were grown old, and many of his neighbours had vanished from the scene. He had gone asleep under the Monarchy and awoke under the American Republic. That is the story, the humorous side of which is admirably painted by Washington Irving. It seems to me that in one point of view, at least when we exercise that wonderful faculty of memory that power of abstracting ourselves from what has passed and is passing before us, and carry ourselves back to the days of our youth, and for a few moments ignore all that has since passed around us that one is somewhat in the condition of Washington Irving’s hero of the tale in America! The history of a small city involves the history and the progress of the nation. The population of the country has increased relatively as the population of our own City has increased. The same causes which have led to our improvement have led to the improvement and the advancement in wealth, honour, and happiness of the increased population which these circumstances have brought into being. Nothing, I think, could be more distressing than to have our progress blotted out. That is not the way in which a wise and merciful Providence deals with his creatures. Our troubles, our afflictions, the memory of those we have lost, become pleasant memories. We do not fail to notice the beauty of the thought that those who are taken from us are not lost, but only gone before. And so it is in the life of a nation. If one were depicting the life of the nation for the last 50 year’s one would speak of the happiness that the great bulk of the population enjoyed.