BANQUET TO GARDENERS. 37 
preside at an ‘‘ annual banquet to the gardeners of the in- 
stitution, and invited florists, nurserymen, and market gar- 
deners of St. Louis and vicinity.’’ It is my pleasant duty 
this evening to welcome you, on behalf of the Trustees of 
the Garden, to the first dinner given under this provision of 
Mr. Shaw’s will; the first of a long series of what I hope 
may prove occasions of interest and profit, recurring each 
year with the ripening of the choicest fruits of our land. 
Doubtless with the flight of years, these occasions will 
grow in importance and in value to all who may be con- 
nected in any way with them. But to whatever impor- 
tance they may attain, none can equal in interest the pres- 
sent, which you have honored with your presence, for it 
inaugurates this feature of the Garden. It is fitting, there- 
fore, that some mention should be made this evening of the 
reason for this particular institution. 
To understand this fully, requires a knowledge of the 
man who has established it. A business man of unusual 
industry and application, Henry Shaw early reached the 
point where he felt that he possessed enough of this world’s 
goods to supply the needs and carry out the highest am- 
bitions of a man of his simple tastes and benevolent mind ; 
and at the age of forty years he retired from active business 
and devoted the remainder of an unusually long and active 
life to the development of what we trust may come to be a 
most useful and beneficent charity. A lover of plants in 
and for themselves, Mr. Shaw was no less mindful of their 
utility in the economy of the human race, and of their ex- 
emplification of that Divine wisdom which he loved to con- 
template and which finds recognition in the language of his 
will and in the inscriptions graven in the stone of which 
some of the Garden structures are built. 
SIG was his faith — perhaps is mine — 
That life in all its forms is one, 
And that its secret conduits run 
Unseen, but in unbroken line, 
From the great fountain-head divine, 
Through man and beast, through grain and grass.”’ 
Sonn ae 
Pa mie ee ion : ee “ee 
