STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 159 



from the earth, but ^vill endure while time lasts, unless the human 

 race should again sink into benighted barbarism. 



Now 1 suspect this dark and gloomy picture of the future of our 

 Society is caused nuiinly by the color of the glusses through which 

 we are looking. Is it not ourselves who are growing old, nearing 

 the valley and the shadow? Does not the consciousness that we are 

 fast ripening for the sickle cause us to see, or think we see, a finished 

 appearance to all things that we have helped to organize or been 

 intimately connected with? This, to a certain extent at least, seems 

 to be the tendency of the human mind, and it is not strange that 

 those old men, now fast drojoping out of line, who assisted in the 

 organization of the State Society, think when its control passes from 

 their hands its career of usefulness will end in death: and a dis- 

 couraged tired feeling seems at times to pervade our deliberat'ons, 

 and a what-is-the-use feeling seems to possess many members and 

 finds expression in talk and essays. ' 



Now because we have not achieved the grand success our san- 

 guine youth pictured to our ambitious minds, or because we have 

 feasted on fruit and flowers until we are satiated, or by reason of old 

 age and poor digestion have lost a portion of the interest we once 

 felt in these matters, is no reason we should discourage others by 

 our complainings and sombre forboding of the evil days that are in 

 store for us. Why should we so soon forget the early days of our 

 horticultural life — days when we watched with such a keen and 

 absorbing interest the expanding leaf, the unfolding flower, and the 

 develo])uient of the fruit? With what anxious care and solicitude 

 we marked the unrolling of the canna leaf, or measured the gigantic 

 caladium, and waited day by day with feverish impatience to behold 

 the bloom on the novelties in the flower garden. Now because we 

 do not enjoy this care, labor, and communion with nature as we 

 once did. shall we say irhat is flie use? it does not pay. Is there 

 nothing that l)ays excei)t what we can wring dollars out of? I tell 

 you there are many things in horticulture that pay big from which 

 no golden dollars can ever be extracted. 



It is undoubtedly true that horticultural societies, like every- 

 thing else, have their u]is and downs, their childhood, youth, middle 

 age. and the "sear and yellow leaf." Some die in infancy, others in 

 middle age, while others live and flourish for ages. Why this differ- 

 ence? Some are organized, and for want of a leader, or one to take 

 the burden u])on his shoulders and bear it onward, the society soon 

 becomes a thing of the past. Others more fortunate, have one or 

 two who take a deep interest in the matter, working in season and 

 out, with energy and ])luck, and manage to keep vitality in the 

 organization for many years, lint to have a good, lively, wide- 

 awake society there should be at least a score of working members, 

 with plenty of reserve force for great occasions and to furnish the 

 needful for running expenses. And this is the kind that attain 

 great age and usefulness. 



