PROCEEDINGS OP THE ANNUAL MEETING. 349 



them I came out wrong. If I do not know whether a man is successful 

 or not, 1 am slow to follow his advice. I inquire first to know whether 

 he succeeded in taking his own medicine, and whether it helped him — 

 if he has not, if it did not, I will not touch it. 



The President: I want to say that I think, for a number of years, I 

 was in need of an answer to the same question just put. I was taking too 

 much advice and depending, perhaps, too little upon myself, and taking 

 advice without knowing how to take it; as a consequence, I did a great 

 deal of hard work and received practically nothing for it. I think, through 

 the solicitation of Brother Reid, here (who you may think is not a very 

 good friend of mine, from some of the things that he and I say — but he is, 

 and I am one of his best friends), I think through his solicitations I 

 became a member of the State Horticultural society. I think he drove up 

 to my place one day and requested that I take an interest in this thing, 

 and I did so; and I got my first inspiration pretly nearly from the first 

 meeting, although we had held local society meetings in order to inform 

 ourselves better for a year or two. But if gave me an inspiration, and I 

 heard men make statements in regard to their practices, and I really 

 thought I ought to know whether that was all so or not, and I spent a 

 great deal of time and considerable money in traveling around and visit- 

 ing men's plantations who were said to be successful. I afterward 

 attended the meetings of other state societies. At state society meetings 

 we have a right to expect the best there is in the state to assemble, and 

 nothing but the best should be good enough for any man any more. I 

 have attended these society meetings, I have listened to the advice, I have 

 got just as close to these men as I could, and by spending a little time 

 and perhaps a little monej^ you can get the best there is. It has helped 

 me wonderfully. Whatever measure of success I have made I do not 

 ascribe entirely to myself. I try to see what I am looking at, and lots of 

 times I have wondered that I have not seen more when I was looking 

 straight at it. A single idea brought out at a meeting is often worth 

 dollars to a man who is growing fruit; perhaps a single sentence in a 

 paper from some man from whom perhaps you would not expect it, often- 

 times a man who is a practical man, sits still in a meeting until he seems 

 impelled to rise and say something, because he thinks there is a mistake 

 being made; he may get up, with an effort that almost makes him sweat, 

 and say half a dozen words that carry dollars right to some other man. 

 I have seen that done so frequently that I have made application of those 

 things in my own case, and have heard just single sentences that made me 

 wonder that I had not thought of it before, because I had been all around 

 it, that have helped me in various details. We must use judgment and 

 then hunt for information. 



Prof. Tracy: Reference has been made to successful men. Who is the 

 successful fruitgrower? I know of a man who has resided in the city of 

 Detroit, who was a millionaire, but many of the last years of his life had 

 to be spent in an asylum where he was guarded and protected from self- 

 destruction. That man told friends, although he was a liberal man in 

 one way, giving to benevolent institutions, that it cut like a knife for him 

 to give anything away, and yet he felt impelled to by his moral character. 

 As I say, that man was a millionaire. He was the laughing-stock of his 

 city because of his close pecuniary ways, and he died in an asylum where 



