32 BOAEID OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



When I started upon my farm life I looked around the State 

 hunting for somebody to help me in trying to advance the 

 agriculture of the State, and I struck upon one of those Brook- 

 lyn boys, or he was looking for me, I will not say which. He 

 came from Rhode Island originally, but settled in Brooklyn. 

 Henry A. Dwyer, the first secretary of the State Agricultural 

 Society, was from Brooklyn. And just those conditions which 

 we have heard discussed by the speaker, when they discussed 

 great theological questions in the blacksmith shop, I found 

 existing there in Brooklyn, when I spent a Sabbath day with 

 my friend Mr. Dwyer. In his family there were two teams got 

 ready every Sabbath day to go to church. One of them went 

 to the Congregational church, and the other team went to the 

 Episcopal church. While that was one point, here is another : 

 There was this rivalry between these two institutions, and dis- 

 cussion ran high, on which the members of these two societies 

 came together as one. There was an old deacon there in the 

 Congregational church who was a watchmaker by trade, but 

 who was an ardent cultivator of flowers. A wonderful culti- 

 vator of flowers. He was poor, but he managed to live. There 

 was also an Episcopalian minister there, who had a small salary, 

 and also a lover of flowers. He built a greenhouse with his own 

 hands, and raised there the most beautiful flowers found any- 

 where in that part of Connecticut. Those two men, while they 

 were theologically apart, and often discussed these matters, were 

 as one in their common admiration and their love of the culture 

 of flowers and in the pleasing effects that flowers bring to the 

 people where they had an opportunity to distribute them. 

 Either one of them would hitch up his horse and drive three 

 miles to carry a bunch of flowers to a sick lady, and they would 

 often get together to show each other their choice productions. 

 They were as happy in the enjoyment of that pleasant social 

 intercourse that brought them together as they were in their 

 works and achievements of life. The old deacon in his last 

 days made a happy strike in agriculture, which relieved him of 



