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JAMES J. HILL 241 and Buffalo. Yes, even the teeming millions of the Orient receive their bread from the holds of the mightiest levia- , thans that have yet carried the American flag over the Pacific. It were as impossible as unnecessary to attempt an enumer- ation of the incalculable and inuneasurable activities of this man's life. For five decades the people of the Northwest have recognized in him the master spirit of their industry. To him have been yielded the rich rewards which the world always has for the man who contributes to its well-being. It is not our idea of gratitude to bear the laurels of our esteem to the graves of those who have bravely wrought. Post- humous gratitude is the tribute of an unworthy beneficiary. We should bear to these men the grateful appreciation of a nation and a people conscious of the service that has been rendered to us. As we look into the book of his experience we are stricken with wonder at his humble beginnings and at his matchless achievements. We see the fifteen year old boy a hewer of wood as was the great Lincoln. We see him working all through the day; then reading and studying late into the night. We see him as he sets out toward the West, the call of the unknown in his heart, before his eyes the vision of a r transformed continent. We see him past the close of his al- lotted threescore years and ten, upon his head the snows of the deepening winter, within his grasp the sceptre of an empire carved out of a desert, and with profoundest rever- ence we seek to know the secret of his extraordinary life. True it is indeed that genius is the boundless capacity for hard work. Thomas A. Edison, the greatest wizard in the long history of invention, has defined for us the genius that succeeds, in his epigram, * * Genius is five per cent, inspiration and ninety-five per cent, perspiration.'* How apt we are to explain failure and success in terms of blind chance and for- tune. How ready we are to excuse ourselves, our lack of in- dustry, our apostacy to the ideals we have never served, by claiming the immunity of those whose careers have been wrecked by the ruthless hand of fate. How willing we are to ascribe wonderful accomplishment, heroic achievement, and