STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 9 



But to-day I welcome you not only in behalf of the Horticultural 

 Society, but in behalf of the institution over which I preside, which wel- 

 comes you here to its halls. It is with great pleasure we have thrown 

 open these rooms, and your presence here is doubly welcome because 

 your purposes are akin to our i)urposes. You draw at the ropes, we push 

 at the wheels, and there are those who work hard among us to push 

 forward your grand enterprise for the good of mankind. Both the 

 University and this Society are trying to do what we can for the good 

 of mankind, for the advance of civilization, and for the training of man- 

 kind to a sense of higher things. 



This institution is of great interest to you. I know that though you 

 may have attended to the strict business before you in your several 

 sessions, yet the interests of this institution have been at your hearts ; 

 members of this association have cherished our institution ever since its 

 commencement. We have had Presidents of the Society, and members, 

 who belonged to our Board of Trustees, and one of those Presidents has 

 sons who are students in these halls to-day. There is one at least, if not 

 more, of the sons of your former President, a most influential man. 

 They were good boys, and did credit to the father and mother who gave 

 them birth and reared them. 



In all this work that we have been seeking to do, we have been 

 aware, at all times, that however there might have been misunderstand- 

 ings on your part that led us to misunderstand you, yet at heart we were 

 substantially, steadily, and with all our strength, moving on to the same 

 purpose that you have in view. And, gentlemen, I believe that the more 

 you know of us, the better you will like us. You will not take it as an 

 expression of vanity if I say this. We have nothing to fear from the 

 outside. We have steadily invited our critics and our friends to come 

 and see after these things — whether their Industrial College was what it 

 ought to be — whether it was doing the work it ought to do. You have 

 been aware of the difficulties under which the work has been accom- 

 plished, and yet steadily through them all there has come a gleam of 

 hope, brightening from the fact that we are in a State where agriculture — 

 the largely i)redominating industry — has not only its farmers, but its 

 horticulturists. I could forgive Connecticut, with her poor soil and 

 limited area, for failing in an agricultural college, if it did not do very 

 much in the way of educating agricultural students. I could not forgive 

 the institution in the State of Illinois which should fail in accomplishing 

 this purpose, where agriculture lies written in characters as deep as its 

 soil and as broad as its prairies. Such are the hopes with which we have 



