202 STATE HORTICULTUKAL SOCIETY. 



responsibilities of life, the leading thought always being — and it is a safe one — 

 that Ave live more for olheis than for ourselves. A generous feeling of kinship 

 pervades llie vvl)ole cstablislnnent, and puts everytliing, vegetable and animal, 

 rational and inational, on its best, lands its ambition, and heli)S it to succeed. 

 All mine are parts of me. 1 and tliey give and take, and so we grow. 



Sucii a iiimily deserves a home, and they will make it and should own it. 

 The soil, the tiee, the vine, and domestic animals love the owner's hand. 

 Comfort, content, and thrift will come in ihe iiouec and around it. The 8u<y- 

 gestion of divorce would be trea&^on there. The combined vigor of muscle 

 and thought and character, going forth from millions of such homes, lias car- 

 ried our nation forward to its commanding position and holds it foremost in 

 the career of progress. 



Would you reform the State? Reform the homes. Let the common talk, 

 reading, habits, manners there be such as you would transplant into all places 

 of inlluence and power. 



The second response was called out by the aunouuceuient: 



" HORTICULTURE AND THE SUNFLOWER." 



Judge Wm. Newton said : Because I am a farmer I suppose I am asked to 

 speak. Horticulture means gardening, and is confined to a limited or small 

 piece of land ; it includes the raising of fruits, vegetables, and flowers. It ie 

 farming on a small scale, with the opportunity for greater care in the cultiva- 

 tion, and for the trial of those experiments which have resulted in producing 

 better fruits, superior vegetables, and finer and more beautiful flowers. To 

 look at horticulture from a mere material standpoint, the worker is a man 

 who delves in the earth for the purpose only of raising a crop and reaping a 

 profit, — a man who lives to eat, rather than one who eats to live. But this is 

 not the proper estimate of the nian whoso courage entered the forest, cut down 

 the trees, cleared up the land and planted it with the vine and the rose, and 

 made it more beautiful than he had found it. His [)03ition is entirely different; 

 he borrowed his ideal from the world in which he lived. He saw the sun, and 

 felt its warmth and life ins()iriiig rays; he saw the sea and rivers and rivulets, 

 the latter feeding the former, and affording drink to the almost numberless 

 men and living creatures that daily slaked their thirst; he found out that in 

 reality the rivers and streams only gave back to the sea its own offspring, for 

 the sea is the father of the rain ; and that nature's strong and mysterious 

 hand had woven sponges in the clouds, which absorbed moisture from the sea; 

 and these sponges, borne by the winds, were carried to his garden or farm, and 

 their contents j)oured out upon the earth, feeding root and limb and leaf. 

 He gazed upon the arched heavens, studded with millious of brilliant inhabi- 

 tants; the moon, suspended lamp of the night, and stars whose peaceful 

 brilliancy attracted the soul of the gazer to wondering worship, and the invisi- 

 ble part; the flower of man's life pronounced it all supremely good and grand. 

 This veneering of the heavens was the vesture in which the world was clothed. 

 He bowed his head, and a voice whispering in liis ear told him that the 

 grandness of all he had seen was as nothing compared to himself; that he 

 vfna a man, a S()veieii::n over all he saw, and felt, or touched; that all these 

 woiideis weio his srrvants; that all nature waited on him, and at his com- 

 mand would do his bidding; that the heavens, the earth, and sea, the rain, 

 electricity, the air, and all its constituent parts \fero his servants, waiting and 



