Let me tell you something about Illinois. We have fifty-six thousand
square miles of land--nearly thirty-six million acres. Upon these plains
we can raise enough to feed and clothe twenty million people. Beneath
these prairies were hidden, millions of ages ago, by that old miser, the
sun, thirty-six thousand square miles of coal. The aggregate thickness
of these veins is at least fifteen feet. Think of a column of coal one
mile square and one hundred miles high! All this came from the sun. What
a sunbeam such a column would be! Think of all this force, willed and
left to us by the dead morning of the world! Think of the fireside of
the future around which will sit the fathers, mothers and children of
the years to be! Think of the sweet and happy faces, the loving and
tender eyes that will glow and gleam in the sacred light of all these
flames!