124 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS 



Second, That the thanks of this Society are due, and are grate- 

 fully tendered to the Galesburg Horticultural Society, for providing such 

 comfortable and convenient places for our meeting, and for the enter- 

 tainment of our members, and to the citizens of Galesburg generally, for 

 the generous hospitality extended to us during the present meeting, and 

 to the several hotels for a reduction in their rates. 



Third, That the thanks of this Society be given to the following 

 railroads for the reduction of rates : Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, Illi- 

 nois Central, Chicago & Alton, St. Louis, Rock Island &: Chicago, Tol- 

 edo, Peoria & Warsaw, Peoria & Rock Island, Chicago, Rock Island & 

 Pacific, and Indianapolis, Bloomington ts: Western. 

 Respectfully submitted. 



H. K. VICKROY, 

 WM. A. NOURSE, 

 A. H. WORTHEN. 



ADDRESS OF THE HON. W. C. FLAGG. 



The prominent feature of the evening was the very thorough and 

 able address of the Hon. W. C. Flagg, of Moro, 111., as follows: 



Fellow Meinbers : 



We have gathered here to-night for the purpose of commemorating 

 the twentieth anniversary of the organization of our Society. One-fifth 

 of a century is but a brief period in the history of the human race. It is 

 hardly an appreciable quantity in the duration of life upon the earth. But 

 it is a wide chasm in the life of each one of us. These years have made 

 men and women of the children that played about our firesides, and 

 brought wrinkles and gray hairs to the comely brows of youth. They 

 have brought age and weakness to those who were in the prime of man- 

 hood and womanhood, and to many, young and old, they have brought the 

 common lot of death. 



" Leaves have their time to fall, 

 And flowers to wither at the north wind's breath, 

 And stars to set, but all — 

 Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death I " 



Twenty years may be — the last twenty years have been — filled with 

 the rush of events, the advance of thought, and compress within their 

 narrow limits the movements of centuries of olden time. "Better fifty 

 years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay," says the poet; and better yet, 

 with all their national affliction of civil war and its consequences, have 

 been the last twenty years of our national life. The stormy discussion of 

 slavery, its violent death, self-sacrifice on bloody battle-field and in 

 bereaved homes, all wakened the higher life and aspiration not only of 

 Unionist but of Rebel. We woke 



" To the higher aims 

 Of a land that had lost for a little her lust of gold." 



