There is a little man who lives in my town about so high (holding his hand a little lower than his shoulders) who lives in an obscure part of the town, and is known to comparatively few people in the town. You go to his house and find it filled with all the evidences of science, specimens from the vegetable world and the mineral world. Going to London a few years ago I was given by this little man a letter of introduction to Sir William Hooker, custodian of the Kew Gardens, which secured for me eminent entertainment and influence. Five years ago as I was about to leave my house to go to Richmond, Virginia, to attend a meeting of the National Board of Trade, he came to my house and had a resolution drawn to be submitted to the National Board of Trade, declaring that the national government should organize a service to _look after the winds of the continent of America_. When I came to Richmond I presented that resolution. It received a most eloquent second from the late General Wolbridge, an eminent citizen of New York. The National Board of Trade immediately passed the resolution. As soon as it was passed I sent it to my friend, General Paine, then member of Congress from my district in Wisconsin, and in an incredibly short space of time for that august body--which is supposed to have at least as much red tape as the National Insurance Company--it was passed. I did not expect that the wind question would meet me at this angle of the insurance trade, but it seems it has. That gentleman I will name. I rise to make these remarks and I wish to speak his name in this connection, because out of his labors so persistent, in his humble house, so unknown to his countrymen--for he is better known in foreign circles of science than in his own country--and through his labors and instrumentality, this thing has been brought into its present shape. His name is Dr. Increase Allen Lapham of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And how, it may be asked, did Lapham’s fellow-men requite his lifelong labors devoted to the public good? The answer which must be made affords much support to the proverbial belief in the ungratefulness of republics. When in 1870 Congress passed the bill providing for the weather-signal service, its execution was entrusted to the chief signal officer of the army. By him Lapham was employed for a short time as special assistant in the War Department at a yearly salary of $2,000. When he sent home (he was stationed at Chicago) to his daughter the proceeds of his first month’s wages, she wrote to her brother as follows: