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Here again our Association must take a bold stand and demand for the feeble-minded the education to which every child in the union is entitled- whatsoever is best fitted for it.

Training is not all, however. Our defective child gets at our hands much more. He is not only ignorant beyond complete training -- he is diseased beyond cure, and often bad beyond reformation. In society his life is a failure. He must be cared for, fed and clothed, prevented from interfering with his neighbors, and from procreating his kind -- the degeneracy must cease here. We offer such a child play, work, comfort, opportunity and happiness, to make a true home until he is called to that higher one in which there is no weakness and inability, and as the modern surgeon, without the letting of blood, draws the distorted and withered limb into its place to grow as strong and useful as it may, so here the kindly teacher, without tears or sorrow or pain, shall draw the darkened mind from its deep place of hiding, to feel and understand the stimulation of nature's beauties and treasures, and the love and sympathy of human hearts.

From my heart I thank you for the honor of presiding at the meeting of such an Association, and I thank God that he has seen fit to place me in the ranks of those who are, I truly believe, doing a work which in the great cause of humanity has no superior.