was surrounded with uncertainty, the local incorporators of the tunnel company, whose names have now been forgotten, sent an agent to London to enlist British capital, and after a season their hearts were made glad by the receipt of a cablegram saying that he had induced the Duke of Teck, the Queen's cousin, to assume the presidency of the company, and that the success of his mission was assured. As our previous acquaintance with the British nobility had been confined to the Marquis of Queensbury, the tunnel company naturally felt very complacent, not so much upon obtaining the desired capital, which, by the way, did not materialize, as upon having induced such a shy and modest character as the average British Duke, to enter into such good society. [Laughter.] The anxiety of the Niagara people, for the success of the tunnel enterprise, was well expressed at that time, in a rhyme, that came from Boston-of all places in the world from Bostonto one of our fairest citizens. It had that polish, that peculiar bean-like polish that appertains to everything that emanates from the Hub, “the home of culchaw." It ran something like this— When the Tunnel goes thro' Won't there be an ado! Won't the Cataract Town have a boom! When the Falls all day long, Will unite in the song, That resounds from the forge and the loom. When the Village gives way To a City, we pray That the Old Fogies won't look so blue, What a shake up! Dear me! Of the Dry Bones we'll see, When the Tunnel, the Tunnel goes thro'! When the Tunnel goes thro' Rustic Neighbor, adieu, To your Courthouse and Locks evermore To the Queen City's gate, She will meet us half-way on the shore! And a Boulevard wide, Will roll on with the tide, Past the ships at our wharves heaving to, And we'll have a Race Track, And a drive out and back, When the Tunnel, the Tunnel goes thro'! When the Tunnel goes thro' Not one City but two, Will arise where the broad river flows. One where Commerce will hold A great struggle for gold, And the other for joy and repose. With no traces of men, Only nature again, And the deers and the bears in full view. A metropolis grand! And a wilderness land! When the Tunnel, the Tunnel goes thro'! When the Tunnel goes thro' Some I know well, don't you? Who will hail it with rapture galore. Get seal sacques for our wives, The nick-nacks which all women adore! We will then have Chateaux! And our own Tally-Hos! And a Yacht and a Green House or two! If with children we're blessed But I'll leave all the rest 'Till the Tunnel, the Tunnel goes thro'! [Applause.] Now that may be very bad poetry, even if it did come from Boston. It could not be very much worse if it came from New York, or Philadelphia, St. Louis, San Francisco or New Orleans, or even from Chicago. But from Boston! Shades of Holmes, Lowell, Longfellow and John L. Sullivan, just think of it! [Laughter.] But it was good prophecy as we will see if we review it for a moment. The tunnel "went thro'" and the power house arose on the upper river. Every night from my home, I see it shining more wonderful than Aladdin's palace. A year ago the electric wires reaching from it, carried the roar of Niagara to New York City, where thousands heard it by telephone, who may never see the great cataract. They carried a peaceful message part way round the world. They are speeding electric cars from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario. They will soon be lighting the streets, warming and lighting the homes, cooking the breakfast and rocking the cradle in Buffalo, Lockport, Rochester, Syracuse, and other of our suburban localities. The cataract town has had its "boom" and has settled down to business. Many of us are not so handsome as we were before the "boom," but we know more. [Laughter.] If we have any chateaux they are “Chateaux en Espagne." If there are any greenhouses they are the buildings on the State Reservation, because the people here say that I am laboring under an hallucination-perhaps hereditary in my casethat green is the National color, hence all the buildings on the State grounds are painted green. I know of no yachts in this neighborhood, excepting that of Commodore Connors, and my friend President Ely's private car, which is a sort of a land carrock-but Commodore Connors and President Ely are street railway men-and "of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." I know you would say "Amen" to that proposition. [Applause.] The Falls already "unite in the song that resounds from the forge and the loom." Our host, Mr. Schoellkopf's, flouring mill makes 600,000 barrels of flour each year. This requires 2,700,000 bushels of wheat, the product of 135,000 acres of land, which would make a farm one mile wide and two hundred and ten miles long; and the Central mill, next door to it, requires another farm just like it, to keep it going. Col. Morgan's mill, the Niagara Falls Paper Mill, will use 50,000 cords of wood a year, the cargo of 130 vessels. It will make 240,000 pounds of paper a day. This would make a sheet of paper two feet wide and 2,400 miles long every twenty-four hours, about one-tenth of the distance around the earth; and the Pettibone Company and the Cliff Paper Company, of his Honor, the Mayor, each hope in time to equal this production. The electric current here at Niagara is already making more aluminum, carbide for acetylene gas, soda-ash, chloride of potash, pueride of sodium, and diamonds-yes, gentlemen, diamonds of carborundumthan any other place on the face of the globe; and it seems but yesterday that the electric current was set free. Now let us take another glance at this Bostonian prophecy. We did bid our Rustic Neighbor" adieu. Our rustic neighbor is Lockport. Many years ago Lockport was the leading town in this county. There are some living yet, who remember it. It will occur to your minds at once as the city where the little fat man stole the street railroad, loaded it on freight cars, and got away with it before the inhabitants awoke from their habitual slumbers. I believe he was punished for it, as he deserved. It is one thing to steal a street, and another thing to steal a STREET RAILWAY. The latter is an offence against the law, and should be punished; the former is a duty that we owe to our stockholders. [Laughter and applause.] We did "extend our estate to the Queen City's gate." Buffalo is the "Queen City"-so she says. She met us more than "half way on the shore." She took forcible possession of us. When the tunnel enterprise was hanging in the balance, we invited some of our Buffalo friends down here to help us-Mr. Box, Mr. Bissell, Mr. O'Day, Mr. Urban, and other good fellows. They drank our champagne and smoked our cigars, but did not invest as much money as would grease a gimlet. Now, that the power development at Niagara is a magnificent success, the greatest achievement of its kind of the age, in the expressive language of the day, Buffalo is now "the whole thing." Because of Niagara Power Buffalo is "Greater Buffalo," "The Utopia of the Manufacturer," "The Smokeless City," The Electric City," "The Power City," "The Convention City," extending from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario, estimated population in 1920-two millions-populated by electricity! When we read the Buffalo papers we think we must be laboring under a delusion, in thinking that the cataract is just here at the foot of Falls Street. The American Fall is evidently on the Terrace in Buffalo. This would bring the Horseshoe Fall at Ellicott Square, the power house at Music Hall, and the Cave of the Winds, I suppose, in the council chamber in the city hall-that's where we find it at times, here at Niagara. [Laughter.] That would leave us nothing but the Devil's Hole to bank on. And all this on 1,000 horse power of an available 200,000 horse power, and an attainable 700,000 horse power! What will be their inflated condition when this fall they receive from us the other 9,000 horse power for which they have contracted? Our friends will readily understand, after having been the handmaid of Buffalo in this fashion, what a relief it is to us, just for a change, to find ourselves, for this occasion, the captive of the American Street Railway Association. But, after all, Buffalo is a healthy little city. We are associated with her in our business life, in our social life, and in our religious life—for we have religious life here. You must not judge us all by Mr. Ely. We are bound together, not only by the currents of the great river flowing by our doors, but also by the electric current, which unites us in a common destiny. She has given us Mr. Watson, Mr. Littell, Mr. Box, Mr. Fryer, Mr. Urban, Mr. Norton, Mr. Bushnell, Capt. Brinker and the Pan-American Exposition, and for these, as well as for her beauty, enterprise, and good neighborhood, we forgive her for her intrepidity of statement. "With all her faults, we love her still." We are courting her assiduously, and one of these days, we will wed her, we will unite, absorb and annex her to the one Power City, the only Electric City on the continent of America, the city resting on the very brink of the cataract of Niagara. [Applause.] Just a word, in closing, about the dual city here on the brink of the great cataract, one part for commerce and manufacture, and the other for the pensive contemplation of one of the most sublime works of God! Undoubtedly, the Creator conceived and formed the cataract for the delectation, the purifying, and the uplifting of the minds and hearts of men. The love of the beauty of natural scenery is a characteristic of our modern civilization—one of its most hopeful characteristics. Frederick Low Olmsted says, "There are many passages of natural scenery which, from the effect they produce, may be classed with Niagara among the world's treasures; yet none of them have long been highly valued by any one. A few centuries ago, that is to say, people, even the advanced lines of civilized progress, seem to have taken no pleasure in them. But a change has since been gradually occurring. It was already well marked among the educated classes of the last century. In the present it has advanced rapidly with the main body of people of all advancing countries. As far as our own is concerned, no better evidence could be wanted of such an advance than is to be had by considering the legislation that has established the duties of your Commission, and the manner in which this legislation was brought about, in connection with the fact that when in 1806 the State sold the property which it has lately re-acquired at Niagara, it is not known that a single one of all its people thought of it as having even a prospective value otherwise than a mill power." So tender and sympathetic has that love become that in response to it, the Empire State of New York tore down the barriers and removed the disfigurements that had been placed here, and made Niagara free to all mankind. No other act so reflects the culture and enlightenment of the people of the Empire State. [Great applause.] The Power of Niagara was also surely placed here by the Creator for some wise purpose, to be utilized in His own good time. The development of electrical science showed that the time was at hand, and as if part of a Divine plan, the utilization of Niagara followed almost immediately upon its preservation; the legislation for the one being completed in 1885, and that for the other introduced in 1886. So closely did they follow each other that they were united in one man, a townsman of Mr. Stedman's, Thomas Emshed, of Rochester, who, while making the map, under which the State took the lands, conceived the idea of the great hydraulic tunnel, which he did not live to see inaugurated. Thus, they seem designed to go hand in hand forever. Some there are who fear they are antagonistic, that in the end, beauty will be sacrificed on the altar of utility, by the ever increasing diversion of the water, which forms the beauty of the scenery. But in my mind there arises another and a more imminent danger, that in time the custodians may lose sight of the main object of the State in reserving these shores, the pensive enjoyment of the beauty of the natural scenery, and that in order to attract crowds for other objects, it may be made a place of amusement, that the rope-walker, the mountebank, the hurdy-gurdy and the merry-go-round may, in time, turn these banks into a Bowery, a Coney Island or a Midway Plaisance; that attempts may be made to gardenize these slopes in the grotesque and fantastic shapes found in city parks and at other places of public resort; that they may seek to embellish the scene into glaring structures and artificialties. Any one with the true feeling "One who in the love of nature Holds communion with her visible forms," realizes, that a formation, a statue, a work of art however beautiful or desirable elsewhere, the petty creature of the hand of man, would be out of place here set up in rivalry with this great work of God, by common consent the most sublime thing in nature. [Great applause.] That to attract the multitudes for ends foreign to the object of the State, cheap theatrical effects and colored lights may be introduced. In the mind of the great bard, this indeed would be- |