Fresiden(\'< Annual Address. 13 



cu]\v the most cunning mind. We s^hould seek to engage the noblest men 

 and women in its interests. A great need of the times is to make rural life 

 so attractive, and to make pecuniary profit in it so possible, as to hold our 

 boys and young men on the farm and in the garden. Very mistaken ideas 

 of gentility, of ease of life, of opportunities for culture, or for winning fame, 

 draw a large percenUige of our brightest boys into the so-called learned pro- 

 fessions, into teaching, or into trade. With proper surroundings of the 

 home, with a proper education at school, with a proper administration of the 

 economies of the farm, with a sufficient understanding of the opportunities 

 for a high order of intellectual and social accomplishment in the rural life of 

 this country, this need not, and would not, be so. A bright, high spirited 

 boy is not afraid of labor, but he despises drudgery. He will work hard to 

 accomplish a tine end, when the mind and heart both work together with 

 the muscles; but he will escape from dull, j)lodding toil. Let our boys learn 

 that rural labor is drudgery only when the mind is dull; that the spade and 

 plow and pruning knife are the apparatus with which he manipulates the 

 wonderful forces of the earth and the sky, and the boy will begin to rank 

 himself with the professor in the laboratory or the master at the easel. 

 There is, indeed, occasion that we should, many of us, feel more deeply the 

 glory of our art ; that there is no occupation in life that leads the educated 

 man to more fruitful fields of contemplation and inquiry. The scientific 

 mind finds every day in our orchards and fields new material to work upoUf 

 and the cultivated taste endless opportunities for its exercise. 



While I desire to see a taste for horticulture become universal in town and 

 hamlet, and country, and believe that every cottage and every palace in the 

 land should have its flower garden and fruit garden, in the window or out of 

 the window, and something of the shelter and ornamentation of trees, yet I 

 would not encourage either amateur or commercial horticulturist to plant 

 one vine, flower or tree more than he expects to take some intelligent care 

 of. There has been too much planting in ignorance and reaping in disgust.^ 

 Especially should the planter, on a commercial scale, have a better knowl- 

 edge of the environment of his business. We all need to know more clearly 

 the conditions of great successes, and to understand what difficulties and 

 hinderances are avoidable and what unavoidable. We want more business 

 method in this business. We want scientific knowledge and accuracy in- 

 stead of em])iricism. 



But this will come. American horticulture is only in its youthful years. 

 Its splendid maturity shall see every home in this magnificent country 

 sweetened and beautified by its blossoming and fruitful presence. Let us 

 labor cheerfully, my friends, until not only 



"The guests in prouder homes shall see 



Heaped with the orange and the grape, 

 As fair as they in tint and shape, 

 The fruit of the apple tree," 



but the table in every cottage in the land shall be daily filled with an abun- 



