72 State Horticultural Society. 



find it, and how we wonder at its delicate beauty and its fine fragrance.. 

 There are niany human lives like these flowers ; to know how pure, how 

 sweet, how beautiful they are, one 'must search them out and form tlieir 

 acquaintance. Why do little children always love flowers? I have seen 

 miniature lords and ladies of American birth and culture radiate divinely 

 under the influence of a handful of dandelion blossoms in the early 

 spring; and when the spring beauties appear every meadow near anr 

 town is rife with the happiness of these small people intent on gathering; 

 the treasures. 



Men risk life and health, forsake home and forego the joy of every 

 home tie to hunt for gold in the weird, wild places of the world, Imt 

 little children hunt for flowers. Which quest is the better one? A love 

 for flowers always presupposes a desire to cultivate them. A mere wish 

 to pull them, to wear them, to have them without care, is not love ; it is. 

 covetousness. There are persons who will declare with emphasis that 

 they adore flowers, but who really care no more for them than did the 

 character described by Wordsworth, of whom he said : "A primrose by 

 the river's brim, a yellow primrose was to him. And it was nothing 

 more." There are others who will say with Lee Parker Dean : 



' 'God's gentle breathings are the flowers: 



Each lily, rose and violet, 

 Wooded by the sunshine and the sliowers. 



Is with His fragrant impress set. " 



W^e must always wonder at the mysteries of creation. ]\Ien in all 

 ages have delved, studied, grown gray, aye, gone mad, in futile attempts 

 to fathom the mystery of life, yet each recurring spring time brings the 

 little blades of grass up from the brown sod, and the green leaves forth 

 from the bare, naked boughs of the trees, and no man knows whence nor 

 how they come. We are each forced to say with England's late laureate : 



"Flowers, in the crannied wall, 



If I could understand you, root and all, 



All in all, I should know what God and man is." 



I have little patience with the floral faddist, the one. who plants sweet 

 peas and pansies because it is the fashion to do so, or else cultivates chrys- 

 anthemums because his neighbor does, or because his florist advises him 

 that they are to be "the flowers this year." There is no expression of 

 individuality in this sort of imitation. 



Have you not observed flower plats on certain city or town streets.. 

 each so like the other that you have said, mentally, here is the soul mark 

 of just one man; he is the only individual dwelling on this street; he sets- 

 the fashion, the others imitate. 



Be brave enough, oh, soul, to say your own say, have the flowers- 



