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[[preprinted]] SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 680 [[double lines]] [[/preprinted]] [[preprinted right margin]] Made By Baker-Vawter Co. [[/preprinted right margin]]] PRESENTATION OF BUST OF ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL. After explanatory remarks by Secretary Walcott, he introduced Mr. Walter S. Gifford, President of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, who said:- Mr. Chancellor, Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, and Mr. Secretary: The stately presence and the hearty genial smile of Alexander Graham Bell were for many, many years familiar to these halls. Now that he is gone, we of the Telephone which he invented ask the privilege of seeing to it that, as his memory will always remain here with you who were associated with him in the conduct of this great Institution, so also his face and the spirit that always actuated him shall continue to be familiar to those who come in and out of this building, whether as workers, as students, or simply as visitors. To us of the Telephone, history presents the figure of Alexander Graham Bell as that of a young man of twenty-nine with black hair. To you he is primarily the distinguished citizen of his later years, with white hair and full white beard. But whether of few or of many years in age, his eye and his smile were always the same - keen, radiant, generous, genial and even jovial in his enthusiastic interest in all that concerned the welfare of his fellowmen. Alexander Graham Bell was always young in spirit, young in his loyal companionship with others, young in his engrossing devotion to the service of the unfortunate, young in this absolute confidence in Life. The years brought no difference in his spirit. His spirit was always the same. But although our closest association with Alexander Graham Bell was in his earlier days, we of the Telephone, as a matter of fact, usually think of him as you do, in his later years. Accordingly, we have asked our sculptor to present in this portrait the young spirit of this man, not in his early years when he invented the telephone, or when he was only at the beginning of his great career, but in the full maturity of his riper manhood, in his large versatility, when he had accomplished so much, when he had gone forth into other fields and in every field had wrought fruitful achievement. So, as we of the Telephone see in this portrait the Inventor of the Telephone, may Radio see no less the inventor of the Photophone, the first wireless; may Surgery see the inventor of that device which preceded the X-Ray in the merciful location of foreign substances in the body; may Aviation see the friend and champion of Samuel P. Langley and the Experimenter of the Tetrahedral Kite; may Naval Engineering see the inventor of the Hydrodrome; may the Deaf see him who all his life was their Teacher and Benefactor; and may all who work for the improvement of the human race see the tireless Student of Heredity, Eugenics and Longevity. Alexander Graham Bell was for nearly thirty years, from 1893 to his death in 1922, a Regent of the Smithsonian Institution. For the same long period of time he was a member of the Executive Committee of this Board. You know his services in this capacity better than I. But his earliest association with this Institution is specially significant to us, and it is a common bond between the Smithsonian and the Telephone. On that occasion this Institution in the person of its great first Secretary, Joseph Henry, rendered a most important service to humanity and the future. It was in March, 1875, before Bell invented the Telephone. The incident happened in one of these rooms, possibly in this very room. Bell was at that time thoroughly worn out and very much discouraged. In all lies of work, in all the triumphs of life, great discouragement often precedes the splendid moment of final success. Let me read to you from Bell's own account of it in a letter to his father and [[initialed]] CDW [[/initialed]]
