“Then, there are not so many of you but that you can know each other and be interested in each other and help each other. The so-called philanthropy, which is more interested in institutions than it is in individuals, is a bad thing. What this world, with its suffering and sin and error, needs, is not more brown-stone laboratories and patent book-shelves and institutes for the uplift of the masses and the glorification of the millionaire rascals that endowed them; what the world needs is men that are interested in the individuals that surround them. I have not twenty-five thousand dollars to give away; but, if I had, I would pick out a worthy family that needed it and give it to them. I would endow a trades_man_ and not a trade _school_. Now, conditions here are good, because of the human interest you take in each other. If there were five hundred thousand of you, such personal interest would be impossible. Try to take a _personal_ interest in one hundred thousand people. You cannot do it. The personal relations of employer and employed, of neighbors and friends, in a village are a priceless blessing. “All these things are characteristics of this place. “Besides this, it has its own history, its beautiful street, its scenery so exceptionally sweet and lovely--it is for these things that we celebrate its birthday.” Dr. Ryder’s address was entitled “THE VILLAGE AND THE NATION.” He spoke as follows: “In this picturesque, beautiful and impressive Celebration, the Bi-Centennial of the settlement of this region, thought is naturally turned to the village of New Milford and the community life gradually developed here. There were certain fundamental characteristics of this village life which you, who were a part of it in later days, appreciate much better than your speaker. And yet even a superficial knowledge of what was here begun and has been gradually developed impresses these fundamental characteristics. “This was a simple and natural life. The speaker preceding me has developed eloquently this fact. Artificiality had not yet crept into the social conditions of this life. The value of a man was not estimated by his heredity nor his wealth. It was a pure, clean democracy where every man was a man in privilege and opportunity ‘for a’ that, and a’ that.’