256 ILLINOIS STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



wheat to pay for the guano ! What must I do ? What is the remedy ? I am worth 

 about $15,000 besides the farm. How long will it take to break me ?' 



" The editor of said paper justly remarks, in effect, that the answer to the question, 

 ' How long will it take to break me ?' is the simplest problem in figures. If the expenses 

 in taking care of the horses, cattle, laborers, and in providing all the supplies, for three 

 hundred and sixty-five days, amount to $15,000 over and above the proceeds of the 

 farm, one year will suffice to break him. If, however, the expenses exceed the income 

 by only $5,000, it will take full three years to effectually use up this farmer. 



" And would you believe it, there are some men who do not seem to know that if they 

 pay out more than they take in that they are doomed to financial ruin, at the last. It 

 would be an act of astutest wisdom if, when a man finds that he has no qualifications, 

 and no ability to make horticulture and agriculture pay, he would get out of it ; the 

 the sooner he quits the business the better for him. Fortune awaits him in other direc- 

 tions, no doubt. Let him find his place in the world ; there is a place for him some- 

 where, and by and by he will slide into it by the very gravitation of his nature, and 

 ' swing there as easy as a star.' 



" Nothing is more evident than this : Some men, in then- relation to horticulture, 

 are failures, but horticulture is no failure. If horticulture should fail, the world would 

 fail, and the sun of every enterprise would set in night. 



" Sirs, I have the utmost confidence in horticultural and agricultural pursuits for 

 myself; I speak for no other. Nothing has happened to awaken within me the faintest 

 regret, that I am what I am. Is is not uncommon to find men in every profession and 

 calling, depreciating \hQ\x condition and work. The shoemaker thinks any calling better 

 than his own. The school teacher would be almost any thing but what he is. The 

 mercantile man thinks he has more worying care and frightful dreams than fall to the 

 common lot of mortals, and he sighs for a quiet home in the rural districts. And so it 

 CToes, the world over. But you mistake, if you class ;«<? in this categoiy. I have not 

 a whit less enthusiasm in my work to-day, 



" ' Tfian when I first begun.' 



" I may never be wealthy, yet I expect a competence. And with no aspirations for 

 powder or place, I am happier than a king. 



" To tell the whole truth ; hard as I have been compelled to labor, and se- 

 verely tried as I have sometimes been, I would not, to-day, wish to exchange my hopes 

 and prospects for this world, nor — for that matter, I speak reverently — for the world to 

 come, for those of any other man. 



" What I mean to say is. I am quite contented in, and proud of, my calling. ' I 

 would rather,' said President Wilder, in his address before the Massachusetts Horticul- 

 tural Society, ' be the man, who shall originate a luscious fruit, suited to cultivation 

 throughout the land, of which successive generations shall partake, long after I shall be 

 consigned to the bosom of mother earth, than to wear the crown of the proudest con- 

 queror who has triumphed over his fellow men.' 



" There are a great many men in the world who are seeking and expecting to make a 

 living without work. They try this profession, and then that, this calling, and then that, 

 then even try — deluded souls — horticulture. They were led in this direction under the 

 specious argument that crops grow while men sleep. 



" Horace Greeley never said a truer thing than this : ' The darkest day in any man's 

 earthly career is that wherein he fancies there is some easier way of gaining a. dollar than 

 by squarely earning it.' 



" Now, if any man gets his living by horticulture, it may be supposed that it is done 

 upon the square. There can be no sophistiy here. Mother earth will not even be 

 coaxed, teased or trifled with. Give her what are her dues; feed the soil; cultivate 

 thoroughly, and give your whole intelligence and energies to the growing crops, and you 

 will get sufficient reward. 



" But the simple may ask, ' Do you know all about horticulture ?' That reminds me 

 of a story. Capt. Jack, just before his execution, asked the chaplain, who was trying to 

 crive him spiritual consolation, if he knew all about God and the happy land. The cha{>- 

 lain thought he did. ' Then,' said the Modoc, 'you know all about him, me give you 



