2 94 NEBRASKA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



life, but the saloons get them and they go down in ignoble graves. 

 Thank God we are winning in the battle against this foreign invasion. 

 There is a wave of indignation against the arrogance, the brutality 

 of this whole business. The War Lords of Gambrinus have ruled a 

 great nation. The expense is tremendous and the wreck and ruin is 

 too awful. 



The horticultural army is a tremendous force. Three thousand 

 members of this society, the grandest in the world, wlil be a power. 

 They work for cleanness and righteousness. They will be progressive 

 and positive on all moral questions. Raise trees, fruits and flowers 

 and you are working for the uplift of humanity. You are soldiers of 

 peace instead of reaching out with all the craft and cunning of dem- 

 ons to perfect the high art of murder and destruction. It is your 

 mission to glorify this old earth with beauty to bring out of the 

 unknown yet more luscious fruits and more lovely flowers. 



When you pass on you leave a path of peace behind you, not a 

 path lined with wrecked homes and sobbing w^idows and orphans. 

 You go through a wilderness and it blossoms as the rose. You conquer 

 the bleakness and the desolations and leave landscapes which charm 

 the eye and exalt the soul. 



It is our mission to reach out beyond the dollar and take all 

 that is in store for us. We are on the border of a vast, undiscovered 

 country, full of the surprises of loveliness. We have but seen the hem 

 of natures resplendent robes and know but little glory of her radiant 

 apparel. But few homes in the land have reached their possibilities. 

 There is room for more on every hand. It is our mission to gather 

 the best the world affords and then develop new things. You young 

 people little know what a vast field lies before you. What has been 

 -accomplished is but the promise of vaster achievements. We are sur- 

 prised at what we ourselves have done in the development of new 

 things. Already on our grounds we ^have phloxes, irises and peonies 

 equal, if not superior, to our choicest inportations, and yet but very 

 little time has been given to their production. 



Then, remember, this life borders on the great life beyond, 

 "where everlasting spring abides and never withering flowers," where 

 you pluck fruit from the tree of life which grows on the bank of the 

 river of God's pleasure, and when you leave these fields of earthly toil 

 you are to enter on the higher Horticulture of God. 



Address delivered before the Minnesota State Horticultural 

 Society, December 1, 1914. 



