STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. jg 



The rich and the gifted may enjoy and gather many gracious lessons 

 from music, painting and sculpture ; but Horticulture, as a fine art, is 

 pre-eminently attractive to all tastes, and above every other adapted to 

 the soul-life of all conditions and classes of mankind. A rose smells as 

 sweet to the beggar as to the millionaire. 



" A violet by a mossy stone, 

 Half hidden from the eye, 

 Fair as a star when only one 

 Is shining from the sky," 



addresses itself appropriately and appreciatingly to the sorrowing widow 

 and to the joyous Queen of May. Happy they to whom the refining 

 influences of the love of nature has come; thrice happy they by whom 

 "the art that doth mend nature" is lovingly practiced and fondly 

 cherished as a purifying and ennobling contribution towards the charm 

 and potency of a true and joyous home. 



What a wail is this : 



" O, it was pitiful, 

 Near a whole city full 

 Home she had none." 



I have thus sought to portray the value to us as human beings, 

 beyond mere sustenance and shelter, of the objects which we may collect 

 in our parks and public grounds, with which we may adorn our streets 

 and enliven our highways of travel, and by which we may surround and 

 brighten our homes — culled from the infinite variety and matchless 

 beauty of the vegetable world. I have endeavored to present the 

 civilizing, spiritualizing effects of an intercourse with Nature and a loving 

 association with her generous and guileless children, the plants and 

 the flowers. The fascination and power of beauty, of intricacy and 

 unity, of adaptation of means to ends, make the study and care of these 

 common objects a perpetual pleasure, unsullied and unalloyed. To the 

 toiling and striving no relaxation comes better than that of the garden 

 and the borders ; to those with whom time might hang heavy, there are 

 no better prescriptions than those written in God's great book of Fruits 

 and Flowers. 



The grandest thing that can be said of a government, of the wide- 

 reaching, all-comprehending authority and power of a nation, is that the 

 homes of its common people are appreciated as sacred and enjoyed as 

 blessed. Upon these homes rest the security and stability, the prosperity 

 and perpetuity of all social and political organizations. In the measure 

 that they are pure and appropriate, wholesome laws may be made and 

 everywhere sustained ; in the measure that they are attractive and 

 enjoyable, dissipation and crime are removed and their contaminating and 

 blighting influences retluced. 



It is the high mission of this Society to contribute largely to the 

 refined culture of the home, and thus to promote the true happiness of 

 the people of our great State. No human organization ever had, nor 

 ever will have, on this green globe, a more exalted aim or a more favor- 



