But I have no such gloomy recollection, nor to be honest, have I any recollection at all of the Wadsworth Athenaeum gallery, because, like everybody else who then lived in Hartford, I never went in there. The door was often open and the only sentinel on guard had no more formidable weapon than a pair of knitting-needles. But no one ever crossed that threshold. The simple legend, traced on a placard at the door, "Admission Ten Cents," did the business, or rather, to be more elegant as well as accurate, prevented any business being done. The people who came up the stone steps read the notice and turned off to the left to the library or to the right to the Historical Society, where entrance was free. I say free, but freedom must have its limits if we are to have safety, so the tin sign on the outside of the door gave notice to the always unwelcome boy that he could not go in until he reached the mature age of twelve years. That was one of the things that I wanted to grow to full manhood for. And I well remember my first visit there. As I walked slowly up the stairs I wondered what venerable monument of patriotic achievement, what new inspiration to love for our noble State whose history is such a priceless treasure, what vision of heroic self-sacrifice in her behalf would first burst upon my eager eyes when I should look around the hall. I looked and lo! there in a glass jar stood the chaste but familiar figure of Charles Hosmer's night-blooming cereus--the modest pioneer of the canned-fruit industry in this community. I have made this brief review in order to suggest to you the state of innocuous desuetude in which for more or less time the various miscalled interests in this building had been lying for lack of any interest at all. The library had a limited and dwindling clientage. The Athenaeum was deserted. The Historical Society, with no funds and few friends, was exhibiting a collection of animal, vegetable, and mineral curiosities, while its real treasures of history and truth were by lock and key shut off from the very public for whom they were collected and preserved. Look at that picture, then look at this which greets us here to day.