It is only through the foreign missionaries who go there pledging their lives to the cause of the advancement of Christianity that we have presented to those whom we would convince of the strength and efficacy of Christian civilization that there is in that Christian civilization a living spirit that they ought to embrace.

But jesting aside, my dear friends, there is no experience in my life more delightful than that which I have had in California.

I don't misconstrue it, but I know that Californians are loyal to the backbone and they are glad to welcome to the borders of their great State the representative of the Nation of which they are proud to be a part.

Now I want to respond to what the Governor has said with respect to California.

When we have any past of a picturesque character we ought not to destroy it.

We are in the habit, we Anglo-Saxons, of looking back to our ancestors with a smug satisfaction and thinking that no one has exactly the right to that pride of ancestry that we have.

There is nothing that an American can not achieve and can not overcome.

I am delighted to improve them.

I do not ask your gratitude on that account.

It will certainly be completed by the 1st of January 1915.

You are a marvel.