The impress of her forcible character and refined taste can be detected in many places throughout the great system over which her husband so ably presides, but is known only to those who are admitted to the inner circles of its operations. [Illustration: text decoration] CHAPTER VII. Education from Books, and from Experience--Keen Intuitions--Abreast of the Progress--Mr. Plant’s After-Dinner Speech at Tampa Banquet Given him by Tampa Board of Trade, March, 18, 1886--Location of Tampa--In Territorial Days Had a Military Reservation--In 1884 Population about Seven Hundred--Its Cosmopolitan Population now--Many Cubans and Spaniards in Tampa--Tobacco Industry--Phosphate Abounds in this Part of the State--Much of it Shipped to the North and to Europe--Plant System Gives Impetus to the Prosperity of the Place--Its Progress the Last Five or Six Years. Text-books are necessary instruments in a systematic course of instruction, especially in the period of school and college days, but their chief value lies, not so much in the actual knowledge which they impart as in the intellectual training which they give for the acquisition of knowledge in the future. Hence, as civilization advances and the schools of higher education increase, less dependence is placed on text-books, and more emphasis is laid upon lectures and laboratories by which the student is stimulated to original investigation and independent thought. The knowledge of current events which we derive from observation of human nature, and which gives us great opportunities to do good to ourselves and to others, is not acquired from books. The books may have done good service in the previous mental discipline, but the actual knowledge, the practical experience in a professional or business career, has come to us in the course of solution of the problems of life. Mr. Plant is a striking illustration of this fact. He was never a bookish man, and lays no claim to classical erudition or scientific knowledge; yet he is fully alive to the progress of the human race. Few events of importance in the world escape his keen observation. It was his quick insight and keen penetration which led him to see the opportunities and possibilities offered in the South, when others had passed them by unseen.