ADDRESS BY MR. COLFAX
A recess of ten minutes was ordered as a compliment to ex-Vice President COLFAX, who spoke substantially as follows:
SENATORS--I thank you for this welcome to your Chamber, which brings before me vividly my association with the Indiana Senate in the old State House, thirty-six or seven years ago, before I had even grown to manhood. As I speak to you, its membership comes before me. In the President's chair, at the right side of which was my reporter's table, sat Lieutenant Governor Bright, presiding over a Senate, politically tied then as now, and who, with that fearlessness and will which even his enemies conceded, postponed by his casting vote the Senatorial election to the next session, which then elected him to the vacant chair in the United States Senate. In the back row of seates was the veteran John Ewing, of Vincennes, able, cynical and sarcastic, who always boasted of representating old Knox, "the mother of Counties." Near him, from the District now represented by my friend, Mr. Leeper was the diplomatic Defrees, not now an Indianian, but filling with marked ability a very responsible position at the National Capital; and also, the persuasive Kilgore, with the Quaker-representing and Quakerish Holloway, both afterward in Congress. On the Democratic side I remember as well of the outspoken and irrepressible Walpole, and the dignified Senator from Johnson, Dr. Ritchey, now living in Senator Major's District, who in the darkest hours of our State finances, when we could not pay even the interest on our great internal improvement debt, inaugurated the legislation which gave to us the Benevolent Institutions around this city, of which, as Indianians, we are so proud, insisting of taxation for the betterment of the condition of our insane, blind and deaf.
I can not close without alluding to a speech I heard at that time in the old Court House--the predecessor of the magnificent building in which you are sitting--by ex-Governor Ray, in which he predicted, although there was none then but bottomless mud roads leading hither, that Indianapolis, would, within thel ifetime of some who heard him become the greatest railroad center of the inland cities of the Union, from which railways would diverge in every direction like the spokes from the hub of a wheel. Though this prophecy was sneered at by the two venerable Senators who accompanied me to hear it, it has been verified most remarkably. And if thirty odd years have brought about such wonderful development and progress, who can limit or forcast what may be our future in thirty years more, if your Senators and your successors are faithful to all the interests the people have placed in your hands. And thanking you, one and all, for this friendly and complimentary reception, I will not longer detain you from your Legislative duties.
Then came a recess till 2 o'clock.
