The assembling of our great army was hardly so marvellous as its disbanding. In the olden time it was expected that a soldier would be a brawler when the campaign was over. He was too often a disturber. Those habits of violence which he had learned in the field followed him to his home. But how different it was in this war of ours. The army sprang into life as if by magic, on the call of the martyred President--Illinois' greatest gift, as I have said, to the Nation. They fought through the war, and they came out of it without demoralization. They returned to the very pursuits from which they had come. It seemed to one that it was like the wrapping of snow which nature sometimes puts over the earth in the winter season to protect and keep warm the vegetation which is hidden under it, and which under the warm days of spring melts and disappears, and settles into the earth to clothe it with verdure and beauty and harvest. [Great cheering.] _Alumni Hall, Knox College._ After the public reception was concluded the President and party participated in the laying of the corner-stone of the Alumni Hall on the campus of Knox College. Dr. Newton Bateman, president of the college, conducted the exercises. Prof. Milton L. Comstock read a brief history of Knox College, at the conclusion of which Dr. Adams introduced President Harrison, who spoke as follows: _My Fellow-citizens_--Speaking this morning in the open air, which since my official isolation from campaigning has made my voice unaccustomed to it, will make it impossible for me to speak further at this time. I do not deem this ceremony at all out of accord with the patriotic impulses which have stirred our hearts to-day. Education was early in the thought of the framers of our Constitution as one of the best, if not the only guarantee of their perpetuation. Washington, as well as the founders of the venerable and useful institution, appreciated and expressed his interest in the establishment of institutions of learning. How shall one be a safe citizen when citizens are rulers who are not intelligent? How shall he understand those great questions which his suffrage must adjudge without thorough intellectual culture in his youth? We are here, then, to-day engaged in a patriotic work as we lay this corner-stone of an institution that has had a great career of usefulness in the past and is now entering upon a field of enlarged usefulness. We lay this corner-stone and rededicate this institution to truth, purity, loyalty, and a love of God. _Phi Delta Theta Banquet._