54 Wisconsin State Horticultural Society. 



that subject might be if it should take a notion to announce itself. 

 Now it may have leaked out through some traitor to the guild, 

 that the members of my profession, formerly called the wielders 

 of the birchen-rod, now known as the gentle and humane dis- 

 pensers of "moral suasion," do not know everything. Whatever 

 my convictions on this subject, there are two principles to which 

 I strictlv adhere. One is, never to express my convictions, the 

 other, not to commit myself in any way that may prove the ill- 

 natured insinuation true. So then, if the wise and progressive 

 president of this association had launched at me some disputed 

 theme on Pomology, or some intricate question of soils and fer- 

 tilizers, I should doubtless have tried to look as wise as a fruit- 

 oatalogue, while informing him that I should be most happy to 

 read a paper on that interesting subject, but, unfortunately, hadn't 

 any. I had supposed that I was to have a medley. I had noticed 

 that in all high-toned concerts, after a long and soul-entrancing 

 feast of classical music, during which the connoisseurs look 

 enraptured and the other folks try to look so, the musical artist 

 always has recourse to a medley, in order to let his audience down 

 to the plain level of common, every-day feeling, and bring tbem 

 to a good understanding with each other ; and even through the 

 entrancing tones of Eemenyi's "Baby" and the divine fiddle- 

 strings of 07e Bull, "Auld Lang Syne" waltzes off into "Capt. 

 Jinks," and "Yankee Doodle" keeps strange company with "The 

 Girl I left Behind me." Not that anybody admits that medleys 

 are particularly improving — they only serve the momentary pur- 

 pose of rest after mental concentration, and bear the same relation 

 to the entertainment that mixed sweetmeats do to the feast, well 

 enough in their way, but to be taken with caution. 



So, dear friends, you have had so much of the practical, the 

 improving, the beautiful, before this, that I am sure your gentle 

 patience, and perhaps your good nature, will hold out while I read 

 to you three little " rhymes " that were once strung together in 

 a pretty grove that slopes to the blue Lake Erie. A few weary 

 people, too poor to go to the seaside, had resolved not exactly to 

 climb a tree and draw up the trunk behind them, but to leave 

 the summer's heat and dust in the townj and camp out They 



