It is with feelings of pleasure peculiarly great that, in the name of the local and advisory committees of the World's Fair Auxiliary, I perform my agreeable task of welcoming you to the Third International Folk-Lore Congress. You will pardon me if I insist, with some pertinacity, upon calling attention to some matters concerning it.
I have called it the Third International Congress, and I think that the justice of this name can be fully established. It is a matter of regret that the official International Council, organized for the purpose, should not have fully participated in this Congress, and that the council of the oldest American society should, from local feelings of jealousy, hold aloof from it.
Such disadvantages as these, however, have in no wise discouraged the committee. Imbued with a sense of the greatness of the event and of the fitness of the occasion, it has steadily gone on with its preparations, with the result that must be apparent to you, upon an examination of the programme. That this is truly an International Congress, is shown by the wide geographical range embraced therein. Further than this, it derives its origin from authority higher than a self-appointed, or elected committee.
The World's Columbian Auxiliary regularly constituted as a part of the local corporation, and recognized by formal decree and official prescription, on the part of the Government, is its source of authority. The official participation of three-fourths of the societies forming the International Alliance, as well as of some not of that body, the adherence
17
