AN El,OQrE!SX XRIBIJTE 



XO DR. J. A. \VARDER. 



Ex-Gov. J. Sterling Morton, of Nebraska, from the Com- 

 mittee on Memorial to Dr. J. A. Warder, presented the fol- 

 lowing : 



As guests register their names at a hotel, depart, and are forgotten, 

 so humanity, stopping for a short time on tlie earth, makes its auto- 

 graph upon the age and sets out upou its returnless journey to that 

 realm whence come neither tidings nor greetings. 



Each individual of the race leaves some trace of his existence on the 

 generation in which he lives, and considerable numbers transmit their 

 names to j^osterity itahcised in good deeds or embalmed in noble and 

 elevating thought. 



The desire to be remembered and esteemed by those who come 

 after us seems to be, with the better and more exalted minds, a greater 

 inspiration to high intellectual effort than the mere plaudits of cotem- 

 poraries. As on the stage, those actors who play best their parts are 

 recalled and applauded after the curtain has fallen, so those in the 

 brief drama of life who have best performed their duties are, after 

 their mortal costumes have been forever laid away in restful graves, 

 again called out by their admiring cotemporaries, and thus their intel- 

 lectual and moral personalities reappear before the lights, amidst 

 tumultuous and emulative applause. 



It is the duty and pleasure of your committee, gentlemen of the 

 Mississippi Valley Horticultural Society, in harmony with this line of 

 reflection, to bring before you the character and services of the recer.tly 

 deceased Dr. John A. Warder, of Ohio. His naturally strong mental 

 faculties were led out and trained, in school and college, to a full and 

 vigorous stature. His chosen profession of medicine, in the earlier 

 years of his manhood, occupied his entire thought and stimulated him 

 to untiring labor of mind and body, and, at the same time, gave him 

 also that culture of the heart which, through his refined, emotional 

 nature, was ever incarnating itself in delicate acts of kindness and 

 generosity toward those who needed sympathy or friends. 



But he turned at last from his professional studies — from the book.s 

 in his library — to those broader investigations of the mysteries of life 

 and growth of flowers, fruits and forests, to which the fields, orchards 

 and wild woods of Ohio ever allured him. His childhood and vouth 



