Excerpt from The University of Chicago Magazine, Vol. 2: November, 1909 Utside of some institution of learning we are not allowed to forget for a day or even an hour that this is an age of lightning progress. Our railway trains no longer hesitate at a mile a minute for a run of a thousand miles; our automobiles ignore ordinance limits; and our flying machines vie with the birds of the air in Speed, if not in agility. And all this rapidity of progress in material affairs seems to us to be recent. Fulton's steamboat, a reproduction of which has recently been run up the Hudson River in connection with the tercentenary of its discovery by the enterprising Dutchman, Henry Hudson, was invented not more than one hundred years ago. The engineer who Operated the first steam locomotive is still living. During the lifetime of the inventor of the telephone the Japanese may be introducing his invention into the capital city of Korea. A company is formed to carry on commerce by means of aeroplanes before the first successful trial trip is more than the news of yester day. It has become possible, although by no means yet common, for an inventor or an author to realize before he dies the substantial profits of his invention or his reputation. Looking at the achieve ments of the present day with the microscopic, that is the short sighted, eye of science, it is not practicable to discover that we have anything of value which is more than a century old. Delivered on the occasion of the Seventy-second Convocation of the Uni versity, held in the Leon Mandel Assembly Hall, September 3, 1909. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.