PROCEEDINGS Of the Sixteenth Annual Meeting State Bar Association of Indiana Held at South Bend, Ind., July 10 and 11, 1912 MORNING SESSION. WEDNESDAY, JULY 10, 1912. The members of the Association met in the Banquet Hall of the Oliver Hotel, South Bend, Indiana, at 10:00 o'clock a. m., and were called to order by the President, Mr. Samuel Parker, in the Chair. PRESIDENT PARKER: Gentlemen of the Bar Association and Visitors: It gives me great pleasure as President of this Association to present to you Father Cavanaugh, of Notre Dame University, who will deliver the address of welcome. Address of Welcome BY REV. JOHN CAVANAUGH, C. S. Ç., SOUTH BEND. Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: To me has been given the honor, which I prize very highly, of saying a word of greeting and of welcome. You come here from nearly all the cities of Indiana. You are gathered here from Jay County and from Posey County, and, as some one has said, all the "posies" do not come from Jay County, nor all the "jays" from Posey County. But, from whatever corner of this great state the fruitful mother of vice presidents-you may come, receive our brotherly greeting and make yourselves at home. You come here, not primarily to teach, but to learn, and your learning will doubtless be tempered with humor. In the physical world it seems impossible to strike oil without doing a little boring, and in the world of rhetoric doubtless you rhetorical men have discovered that that is equally true. A friend of mine came back from church the other day and he said in a dismal sort of a way that the clergyman had talked for over an hour, and I asked him what the clergyman talked about. He said: "I don't know; he didn't say." (Laughter.) Speaking of oil--in my old state of Ohio, a man recently sought the services of an expert. He thought he had discovered oil on his farm, and he went to consult an expert and have him analyze a sample and report to him on it. He was in a great hurry and he must have snatched up the first bottle he found on the mantle-piece, for he had hardly returned when he got this report of the analysis by telegram: "I find no trace of oil; you have struck paregoric." (Laughter.) I hope that you orators will, with the least possible boring, strike oil and not paregoric. (Laughter and applause.) We want you to go away from South Bend with happy memories of what is the best, if not the largest, town in Indiana. You know that Admiral Nelson, in the great sea fight of Trafalgar, was signalled by the flagship to withdraw from the combat and to leave the victory to the enemy. The old man steadfastly refused to look towards the flagship, and the officers immediately around him called his attention to the signal. The old man lifted his telescope to his blind eye. and said: "I cannot see it." We South Bend people have a blind eye. We refuse to see anything better than our town. We have heard rumors that down towards the mouth of the Hudson River there is a city that is more of a commercial center, but the fact has never entered into our minds; and we have heard travelers' accounts of a village to the west of us |