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TRANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS 



mark high, I hope, and you will be satisfied with nothing short of your 

 ideal. You mean to be, and no doubt will be, the happy possessors of 

 beautiful farms, stocked with the finest and fleetest of horses, with the 

 most thorough-bred and satin-coated cattle, with the heaviest-fleeced 

 and broadest-backed sheep, and with the fattest and most prolific of 

 yellow-legged chickens; you, who are present here to-day, and all your 

 cousins, sisters and aunts, who may not be here, mean also to have 

 chaste and beautiful homesteads. You hope to enjoy the fruits of your 

 orchards, your vines and your berry patches. You mean to cultivate the 

 flowers, shrubs, evergreen and ornamental trees which can be grown in 

 this latitude. I said you mean to have all this; pardon me, I hope you 

 possess this already, or if not, allow me to say that all this is within your 

 reach. 



It is quite possible that at these meetings you may receive some 

 hints which will enable you without much expense to add much to your 

 comfort and happiness ; I most sincerely hope you may. 



The fact is, my friends, that every man, within certain limits, is the 

 architect of his own fortune, and, consequently, the custodian of his own 

 happiness. Allow me briefly to refer to my own experience. Having 

 spent about twenty-five years of my manhood on a farm in Northern 

 Illinois, I can fully enter into the motives which brought you to this 

 place and vicinity, and know the road by which you mean to overtake 

 the coy maiden already referred to. I have found a good deal of hard 

 labor and many disappointments, which are the common lot of our race, 

 but notwithstanding all these, by far the purest joys, the highest aspira- 

 tions to excel as a farmer and the most unalloyed happiness I have ■ 

 experienced and enjoyed during my life on a farm! Very true it is that 

 all our happiness here is transient, and that sometimes we are tempted to 

 adopt as our own the words of the wise man: "I have builded houses and 

 planted vineyards and orchards, and all is vanity and vexation of spirit." 



I have not the disposition nor yet the ability to lecture on this sub- 

 ject, and yet I hope for pardon if my paper has or shall assume somewhat 

 of a lecture spirit. In planning the adornments and utilities of our 

 homes we must and should lose sight of self, in a certain degree. I have 

 no patience with a spirit of a man who says: "I am well stricken in 

 years, my days will be few at longest ; why should I trouble myself to 

 plant fruit-trees? I'll never live to see them bear, nor can I hope to 

 pluck and eat of their fruit." Such a spirit is the essence of selfishness. 

 Suppose such a disposition had pervaded our forefathers just before our 

 advent in life, where would we have found the sweet cherries, the rosy- 

 cheeked apples and the luscious pears we enjoyed so much when were 

 boys — yes, do yet. I do — don't you? If, therefore, we wish to do our 

 duty to those near and dear to us, to the community in which we live, 

 and to the State which protects us, we should plant trees and shrubs and 

 flowers, no matter if we ourselves are not permitted to taste of the fruit 

 or to inhale their fragrance. 



If we do not, others will; their gain will be our loss. Some years 

 ago. through the kindness of Major Downs, Superintendent of the Central 



