38 MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN. 
late Mr. Shaw, and he took pains to provide in his will for 
the practical carrying out of this desire, that there should 
be a gathering once a year, on such an occasion as this, of 
literary and scientific men, and friends and patrons of 
natural science. This provision of the will comes among 
the later ones, and I take it that in that word natural 
science, in speaking of the friends and patrons of natural 
science, and in desiring to gather together literary and 
scientific men, we have the key-note of what he wished to 
do in providing so munificently as he did for the Missouri 
Botanical Garden.— Not that he desired, at all, I take it, 
to shut away the thought that he could provide innocent 
recreation in the way of the Garden and flowers, and a 
place for retirement and a pleasant retreat for the better-to- 
do citizens of this city and the poorer of this city; not but 
what he had that in view, and that is one blessing, truly, of 
the Botanical Garden, the flowers that are there. It is one 
blessing for all to go there and see them and get the help- 
fulness from that innocent recreation of seeing the beautiful 
flowers. If we might change Shakespere a bit (we never 
ought to do that, ought we?) — putting ‘‘woman’’ for 
‘*man”’ and taking his well-known lines, we would say that 
the woman ‘‘ who hath no love for’’ flowers, or for their 
fragrance and beauty, ‘ in her soul, and is not moved by”’ 
their beauty, ‘‘ is fit for treason, stratagems and spoils.’’ 
And I take it that, in reading the Tale of Two Cities by 
Dickens, you never found in the cottage window of Madame 
Defarge, any flowers. And I rather imagine, if you had gone 
to Mr. and Mrs. Parsons’ window, two or three years ago, 
before Mr. Parsons was taken vigorously out of this life 
for the good of the community, you would not have found 
any flowers in Mrs. Parsons’ window. The people who 
are plotting conspiracy, as Madame Defarge did, and 
plotting anarchy, as perhaps Mr. and Mrs. Parsons of 
Chicago did, are not the ones that have flowers. Flowers 
are, in the first place, a great help and a blessed help 
to the community.— But I do not think that Mr. Shaw 
