2i Wisconsin State Horticultural Society. 



speech, a scraggly specimen of humanity such as is some- 

 times found upon life's hillside; over in yonder hall of learn- 

 ing we find a silver-tongued orator, showering down scin- 

 tiiating thoughts upon a delighted audience; and yet again 

 the second is but the out-growth of the first. 



But while life is given as freely to the rose upon the 

 meadow as to the rose behind the garden pale, we right- 

 fully expect more from the latter than the former, and we 

 are not disappointed. Nature is honorable and pays what 

 she owes to the last farthing of expectancy. Does man? 

 There are some debts we can never pay. We can never 

 pay the mother for the breath she spent toiling into mother- 

 hood. We can never pay the father for the blows he struck 

 on life's anvil to provision needs our coming awakened. 

 We can never pay the generations back of us, whose com- 

 bined skill hung in anticipation of our coming, the lightly 

 swinging cradle in place of the hollowed log they them- 

 selves were rocked in, and prepared the tasteful raiment 

 of civilization rather than nature's garments once the all 

 needful. But while there are debts we cannot pay there 

 are others that we can, and he who leaves a debt unpaid 

 that may be paid smirches his honor. 



Life is complex, and while the rose upon the meadow is 

 the cradle of all rose-life, the reaching out of that rose-life 

 takes many individual forms of expression, and each to be 

 developed successfully must be understood; for we owe it to 

 nature when we enter into partnership with her, as junior 

 member of the firm, that we place ourselves in sympathy 

 with her designs, and not set blindly to work fastening the 

 grape back upon the unyielding trellace, in a vain attempt 

 to make it grow straight enough for fence posts. 



I have before me the growers of vines, vines that in many 

 cases cluster around homes, in which are other vines, all 

 with individual needs and far reaching tendrils. 



Does the grower of the vine without place it in soil of his 

 own choosing, and there bid it gro\^. Aye. But he is care- 

 ful to choose only such soil as he knows the nature of that 

 vine requires. 



Down among the Berkshire hills a young man went 



