178 TEANSACTIONS OF THE HORTICULTURAL 



And now I will tell you why we invited you to come " over the 

 garden wall," so to speak, into our rural City of the Elms, and why 

 yoa will be heartily welcomed here. It is because we wish to en- 

 large our field of vision and of interest, and to open up among our 

 own citizens new avenues of pure, innocent and profitable enjoyment 

 of life. An unhappy horticulturist ought to be as rare as an unde- 

 vout astronomer. To the true horticulturist every field or garden is 

 a Delectable Land. There he whispers to the swelling tubers, 

 flirts with the birds, hob-nobs with beetles, and stands sponsor at 

 the courtship and marriage of strawberry blossoms. 



Now, here is Brother Gray, the President of our local society, 

 give him a jack-knife and a ball of twine, and turn him loose among 

 berry bushes, morning-glories and beetles, and his felicity is assured. 

 But to most of us the rich and delightful book of nature is still a 

 sealed volume; the pleasures of its study are hardly dreamed of. For 

 myself, I confess, with all humility, that 1 know little more of the 

 works and ways of the plants that nod at me by the wayside, or over 

 the garden fence, than. I do of the private life of a lightning-bug or 

 a hippopotamus. Sometimes, indeed, I get a ravishing glimpse of 

 the promised land of science, but, like Moses of old, a glimpse is all 

 I can hope for, for I am one of those old-fashioned candles men- 

 tioned by 0. W. Holmes as being "low in the tallow and long in 

 ^ the wick," and soon to be snuffed out. But you who range those 

 fields of natural science will help us to see and enjoy what we other- 

 wise could not, — at least that is the kind of people we take you 

 to be. I walk abroad at night with certain good men, whom I 

 greatly respect for their wisdom, but though our conversation is of 

 the Milky Way and the constellations, my mind stumbles and floun- 

 ders in miry places of the earth; but 1 saunter with others in lowly 

 places, and, though our talk be only of radishes and earth-worms, we 

 seem to walk with Orion among the stars. Why this difference? Is 

 it not because these latter make their report of nature at first hand, 

 from personal and' loving acquaintance, and so seem to be at one 

 with the universe? I envy the man who is on speaking terms with 

 roots, flowers, berries and bugs. I want to be reckoned an honorary 

 member of his society, by whatever name he may call it. Emerson 

 said of Thoreau that "he told the bees things, or the bees told him." 

 Now we have invited you and welcome you, because we think vou 

 are people of this sort. You are either "well up" in horticultural 

 lore or you are enthusiastic learners, and I am not sure that I do not 

 enjoy the learners best. We welcome you because you bring from 

 nature's open laboratories, from your teachers, the woods, skies and 

 orderly seasons, messages to soften the clink of silver; you bring 

 the rustle of green leaves to replace, for the time, the rustle of dry 

 goods and the meaningless clatter of tongues. 



Bryant says of Truth, that 



" The eternal years of God are her's." 



