Wichita eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1886-1890, 1888-09-11
WICHITA'S WELCOME.
TO HER DISTINGUISHED VISITING
GUESTS,
Who Will Know More About Us by
Reading This Than They
Could Otherwise Learn
ina Year.

You, my friends, the chosen represen-
tatives of an order whose brotherhood
inherits the whole earth aud whose God
is the universal Father of all, have
reached, in your sunset itineracy, the
Nile of America, valley like unto no
other to be found on this continent, and
which, though but recently opened to
the enterprise of the American people, is
already becoming the heritage of the
most progressive and enthusiastic civila-
zion of all history, valley whose
days are a perpetual sunshine,
whose area is equaled by few in
the world and which lies in the very
heart of the American continent, and
whose people dream of the higher
emendation.
<
''God made the country and man made
the town., wrote the inspired Cowper.
In welcoming our distinguished guests
to the Peerless Princess of the Plains no
further quotation will be made, from
any author however eminent. And this
one is only used that we may in denying
its truth, emphasize its diver
sity by the declaration that God
made the country - the country
made the town. Every town can be ex-
actly measured by the country which
environs it, New England with her
rugged hills and hard soils boasts her
austere and rigidly cultivated town of
Boston; the bays of drifting sea weed
and oyster fields and schrimp coves
holds piscatoriai Baltimore: the coal and
iron fields of Pennsylvania matains their
Lofty glowing Pittsburg; the unctious
wales and mineral hills of the Ohio valley
have their smokey, greasy Cincinnati;
the Towering prairies of level marls and
meads that SO broadly band our northern
lakes claim their blooming, efllorescent
Chicago; the incongruous country of
wooded bottoms, rough bluffs and roll
ing prairies, through which you passed
but yesterday, with their queer admix-
ture of Yankee shrewdness, mossbacked
borderisms and western Spectators and
you have Kansas City. In short, the
leading commercial towns of ali distinct
i've sections are ever typical of the coun-
try which made and which stlstains
them.
And so Wichita is the town of this
great slmfiower valley which many of
you have this morning beheld for the first
time, whose muniicent spirit. whose ulti-
mate possibilities and whose typical
breadth are striking exemplification of
the rule that every city is in its unifica-
ton but a reflex of the sustaining forces
OF Its tributary country. We
have here the budding of a commercial |
center, and, while perhaps, only a bud. |
yet not more the bud nor more great |
than than the country which rolls in |
level reaches and magnificent undula-
tons for hundreds of miles away in all |
directions. While we have here but the |
skeleton and sinews of vet undeveIop- |
ed city which may in many respects lack
the desirability of a rounded COM
pieteness. still in these respects she
is but the exact reflex of
the mighty undeveloped domain whose
necessities demanded the existence of a
city here in the first place and which is
now so vigorously sustaining and Won
derfully and magnificently developing it.
X y
To many of our friends who hail from
states, the streets and sites of whose
towns when they have reached the cir
limits given them by
their founders, must either come to
Il halt, fall back on them
selves or break over their confines in the
desperation of some commercial or in
dustrial stress. such in driving about our
city of schools and colleges. of acade-
mics and universities today, may posi-
bly, conclude from their conservative
experience that the so-caled Winning
Wonder of this Western World
spreads too much. To such observers
we beg leave to say that the illimitable
spread, that the boundleSs expanse of
mute immensely, and of the yet to be, of
which this city is the center, and which
sweeps from the rivers north and east
Of lis, away to the mountains and down
10 the sea, is an ever present inspiration
Of augmentation and expansion to all
The men and women so fortunate as To
have cast here their lots or TO have
oulided home under its cloudless skies.
The corn and potato encloures of your
eastern farmers, here spread out into
'ereal fields of unsurveyed leagues:
he garden patch and the feeble .
orchard of the east are here ,
and broadened into VINEYARDS
md fields whose products are measured !
" the car load. The only fence for the
attening kline, as they Craze and multi
by, is the sweep of their herder's eve or
he confines of the distant horizon.
\ our average eastern farm with ali its
lill-bound pastures, cramped lots and ,