We have thus tabulated, in the briefest manner, a few of the advances made in various departments of life during the period covered by this biography: and we have done so because Mr. Plant loves to recount the progress of the human family. He has kept in touch with it all, enjoyed it all, and has himself contributed no small share to its furtherance. It enhances one’s estimate of the marvellous progress of the age in which we are living when we think how much has been accomplished in the comparatively brief period of one life. It gives ground for believing, too, that the next decade will surpass any that has preceded it, and that the twentieth century will outstrip the nineteenth as far as the nineteenth has outstripped any of its predecessors. It inspires the wish, also, that the subject of this biography may live to enjoy much of the world’s era of peace and progress in science, art, industry, philanthropy, and Christian alleviation and uplifting power. May this very imperfect history of a very instructive life prove helpful to those taking their place in the onward march of the race towards its great and final destiny. The wish expressed above for the continued health and life of the subject of this biography was written one year ago, and what follows affords strong hope of its realization. The winter after the Atlanta Exposition found Mr. Plant with signs of failing health, somewhat alleviated by his sojourn in the South; but on his arrival in New York in the spring of 1896, he was taken violently ill and was constantly under the doctor’s care for four or five months. The next winter he passed in the South, resulting in marked evidences of improved health. The next spring, however, another malady developed, greatly impairing health and threatening life for several weeks. Early in the spring he had so far recovered that he went by rail to San Francisco, in his own private car, thence by ocean to Japan and China, and, returning to Japan, spent a large part of the summer there, from whence he sailed for San Francisco and returned to New York early in November, nearly all evidences of past diseases having disappeared, and he has passed his seventy-eight birthday in apparently good health. It is needless to say that honors, courtesies, and kindnesses were liberally tendered him throughout his whole trip in the East, which he enjoyed to the full.