174 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



' 'Van Deman " have defied the drouth and look fine, while many others perished. 

 Hoping you may have one of the best meetings, I am 



Yours fraternally, 



J. N. Menifee. 



Washington, D. C, Oct. 16, 1893. 

 Mr. L. A. Goodman, Secretary Missouri Horticultural Society, Westport, Mo.: 



DEAr Sir— Your kind letter, inviting me to attend the next meeting of the 

 Missouri State Horticultural Society, is at hand. If possible, I shall endeavor to 

 be present, as nothing would give me more pleasure than to meet all of my old 

 friends once more. We have made rapid progress in treating plant diseases since 

 I left Missouri, and I feel as though I could spend a whole day with profit talking 

 with our fruit-growers, and listening to their suggestions. It rests with the 

 authorities here as to my coming. If arrangements can be made, I will write you 

 in due time. 



My assistant. Mr. Waite, who has recently returned from Southern Missouri, 

 speaks glowingly of the country as a fruit region. 



Very truly, B. T. Galloway, 



Chief of Division. 



As much as we were in hopes of having our old friend Prof. Gal- 

 loway with us, we were doomed to disappointment. 



St. Louis, Mo., Decembers, 1893. 

 Hon. L. A. Goodman, Secretary Horticultural Society: 



My Dear Sir — It has been my earnest hope for more than a month past to be 

 with you and aid in the good work of the State Horticultural Society, at Fulton, 

 but a bad attack of the prevalent influenza has made it imperative that I take 

 no risks of exposure ; hence am compelled to await the orders of the Society in 

 my office. I beg to assure you, however, that the Rural World is heart and soul 

 with you in your "work of faith and labor of love," and stands ready to do its 

 share of the work in building the great industry in Missouri and contiguous states 

 with the master builders. 1 hope most sincerely that you will have a large attend- 

 ance of earnest, experienced working men — men whose hearts are with you and 

 all the officers of the Society in spreading a knowledge of the gospel of good fruits, 

 and that the outcome of this annual gathering will be a wide distribution of prac- 

 tical information, which shall enable even the new-comer and the beginner to 

 prosecute his work to profit and success. 



The officers of your Society have done marvelously well for the good of horti- 

 culture through very many years, and the condition of the industry in the State 

 today testifies in trumpet tones, to the eff"ect that work has had upon the men in 

 interest and to social and commercial progress. But your efforts at the Columbian 

 Exposition have called attention to the State and its industries in so clear, so 

 forcible and so emphatic a manner, that one cannot but believe great good must 

 ultimately result. The work was good ; it was devout, unselfish, earnest, and its 

 results must form the material for the monument to be erected to the memory of 

 the faithful workers in the good cause. 



But, my dear Goodman, Missouri is a great State— great not only in the num- 

 ber of its acres, or its pre-eminent geographical position as the foremost of the 

 great central States, but in its fruitful soil, its temperate climate, its undulating 

 surface, its magnificent rivers and water-courses, its unsurpassed mines of coal, 

 iron and lead, and of other important material which enter into the commerce of 

 the^ world ; great in its commercial industries, in its metropolitan cities and their 



