STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 77 



flower that blooms or the snviHest leaf that spreads its surface to the sun 

 is without its purpose and its power in the world of thought and feeling? 

 It is true we may trample them beneath our feet and know not their soft 

 appeals; it is true that the uncultivated and the busy burdened, toiling 

 relentlessly for bread, and especially those fretting with a feverish fond- 

 ness for gold and gain, may pass unheeded these well-springs of love and 

 life; even the gay girl may cull from the luxuriant bosom of mother 

 Earth the fairest flowers, fairer and finer than the array of Solomon in all 

 his glory, and remain untouched by any feeling beyond that of the 

 pleasure of her own adornment and the selfish pride in her enhanced 

 personal charms. Too many, oh, far too many ! claiming the proud title 

 of man, and must it be said, sometimes even the exalted name of woman, 

 have eyes and see not in these loveliest things of earth anything beyond 

 green leaves and prettily-painted petals. 



To understand their real language we must by familiar friendship 

 encourage them to speak to our hearts their lessons of surpassing interest. 

 their love-stories of sublimest emotion, their counsels of uncloying and 

 unerring wisdom. It is through their associations with human histories, 

 it is through their symbolic uses and sentiments in human homes and 

 native lands, that we derive from these gifts of God our highest pleasure 

 and learn to love them as things of truth and life. How dear the three- 

 leaved shamrock, pressed in the bosom of an immigrant from the Emerald 

 Isle ! How the tears well up unbidden in the eyes at sight of some 

 simple memento — a leaf, a faded flower — laid away in some sacred place, 

 but not forgotten ! What lively and lasting interest we have in the 

 unsullied objects so long connected with the joys and sorrows of human 

 existence. Flowers have wreathed the proud brow of victory, and cheered 

 the patient bed of pain ; they have adorned the bride in her lovliness, 

 and rested upon the cold bosom of death; they have loaned their charms 

 to the festive board, and sent a thrill of pleasure to the captive's cell. 



" Bring flowers to crown the cup and lute, 

 Bring flowers — the bride is near; 

 Bring flowers to soothe the captive's cell, 



Bring flowers to strew the bier." Miss Landon. 



Rip Van Winkle, in his wanderings in the mountains, is made to 

 say that he loved the old trees and felt that they were worthy of his 

 affection. Who has not learned to look upon them as, in some way, not 

 distantly related to himself? We come to regard them as things of life, 

 possessed of a spiritual nature capable of sharing our joys and griefs. 

 More than one day-dreamer has shared the confidence of a "Talking 

 Oak" so pleasantly pictured by Tennyson. Most writers upon topics 

 connected with the social and moral life of man make frequent allusions 

 to trees, as illustrative of character or emblematic in a higher sense of 

 the attributes of man. In the Scriptures the cedar, the fig, the olive, the 

 palm, the vine, the tree, are words of the common vocabulary. Poetry, 

 bearing the badge of immortality for itself, abounds in references to the 

 forest kings and sylvan queens. 



