254 • State Horticultuml Society. 



BENEFITS OF HORTICULTURAL ORGANIZATIONS. 



(By Walter Williams of Columbia, Mo.) 



It seems that I am to have the last word, said Mr. Williams, 

 and with ladies on the program. I am to follow the distinguished 

 New Yorker, who has paid you the highest compliment by saying 

 that you looked like a New England audience. He said that the 

 east had built up this country, but some have come from other 

 states and from the lands beyond the seas. New England was cer- 

 tainly a great country. Only a short time ago I had for breakfast 

 there Martha Washington pie, and I think it was made by Martha 

 Washington herself. I had not intended to speak long, and shall 

 not. 



No one can go away and then come back to Boonville without 

 valuing old friends. Like the springs of Mt. Hermon, it is said 

 that he who once walks up and drinks of the waters of this spring 

 will surely return again to drink once more at that crystal fount, 

 no matter how far he may have wandered. The spring which used 

 to bubble out near this place is something like that. Old friends 

 are the best after all. Man is a three-storied being — the physical, 

 the intellectual and the spiritual. * * * There are three stories 

 to society also — the commercial, the social and the educational. 

 If it does hot stand for that, it does not reach its highest usefulness. 

 I do not know why I was asked to speak to this audience. I know 

 little about horticulture. Why, I scarcely know a Ben Davis apple 

 from a pile of sawdust, with shine on the outside. If I were to 

 furnish a prescription of apples, I would prescribe Jonathan to 

 furnish human kindness, gentleness and grace; Ben Davis to make 

 a man look well after being out all night, and to keep in any climate 

 wherever he may be sent. The apple is ancient of days. We can 

 go av/ay back to the time when Mother Eve learned something 

 about it, and ever since that time Adam's apple has stuck in man's 

 throat. The apple is long of life and as well as ancient of days. 

 In this same New England we have been hearing about I asked 

 a waiter girl what kind of breakfast food they had. She said 

 apple, peach, pumpkin, mince. What a time there will be. Apples 

 in paradise, apples in Missouri, apples in New England, apples in 

 Heaven. How widely distributed. The study of producing them 

 must teach us patience. There were no apples in Job's day, or 

 there would have been no Job. No man can plant an apple tree 

 and then wait for the crop without a stock of patience exceeding 

 that of Job. What a miracle to sit and watch the machinery send 



