_Mr. President and Fellow-citizens_--I did not expect to make any address on this occasion. It would have been pleasant, if I could have found leisure to make suitable preparation, to have accepted the invitation of the committee having these exercises in charge to deliver an oration. I would have felt it an honor to associate my name with an occasion so great as this. Public duties, however, prevented the acceptance of the invitation, and I could only promise to be present with you to-day. It seemed to me most appropriate that I should take part with my fellow-citizens of Indiana in this great ceremony. There have been few occasions in the history of our State so full of interest, so magnificent, so inspiring, as that which we now witness. The suggestion that a monument should be builded to commemorate the valor and heroism of those soldiers of Indiana who gave their lives for the flag attracted my interest from the beginning. Five years ago last January, when the people assembled in the opera-house yonder to unveil the statue which had been worthily set up to our great war Governor, I ventured to express the hope that near by it, as a twin expression of one great sentiment, there might be builded a noble shaft, not to any man, not to bear on any of its majestic faces the name of a man, but a monument about which the sons of veterans, the mothers of our dead, the widows that are yet with us, might gather, and, pointing to the stately shaft, say: "There is his monument." The hope expressed that day is realized now. [Cheers.] I congratulate the people of Indiana that our Legislature has generously met the expectations of our patriotic people. I congratulate the commission having this great work in charge that they have secured a design which will not suffer under the criticism of the best artists of the world. I congratulate you that a monument so costly as to show that we value that which it commemorates, so artistic as to express the sentiment which evoked it, is to stand in the capital of Indiana. Does any one say there is wastefulness here? [Cries of "No, no!"] My countrymen, $200,000 has never passed, and never will pass, from the treasury of Indiana that will give a better return than the expenditure for the erection of this monument. As I have witnessed these ceremonies and listened to these patriotic hymns I have read in the faces of the men who stand about me that lifting up of the soul, that kindling of patriotic fire, that has made me realize that on such occasions the Nation is laying deep and strong its future security.