SUMMER MEETING AT BROOKFIELD. 9' 



When we first received your invitation to hold our meeting here, 

 we had some hesitancy in deciding to do so, but now, after seeing 

 something of your beautiful and enterprising city, and how the people 

 turn out to welcome and encourage us by your presence, I feel safe in 

 saying that as a society we will all agree that we have been most fortu- 

 nate in our selection of a place to hold this meeting. And I want to 

 say to you, my horticultural friends, that have come from a distance to 

 attend this meeting, that you must not think of returning home without 

 taking a good look over Brookfield. For when you have, as I did this 

 morning, you will certainly be convinced that her people belong to the 

 wide-awake, liberal-minded, progressive type, with whom we, as horti- 

 culturists, love to associate. The warm and eloquent address to which 

 we have just listened, the decoration of this hall, the sweet strains of 

 music, and the kindly greeting with which we meet on every hand, tell 

 us, in language too plain to be misunderstood, that we are welcome to 

 your city and to your homes. And it all goes to give the finishing touch 

 to one more beautiful brick to be added to the grand temple of Mis- 

 souri's hospitality, of which we are justly proud. We trust that a three 

 days' session of our society in your midst will not only prove pleasant 

 and profitable to ourselves, but that it may awaken an increased in- 

 terest among the good people of Brookfield and vicinity in horticul- 

 ture, that will in time, more than repay you for the kind efforts made 

 on our behalf. To this end we most cordially invite you all to attend 

 our sessions and participate in our discussions, so that all may reap 

 the benefit of a full and free exchange of ideas relating to horticul- 

 ture. 



What we most need in order to promote this great industry that 

 has within it so much of good for the human race, and place our noble 

 calling on a higher plane, is organization and united action. We find 

 that individual effort in the pursuit of horticulture without organization 

 is much like the stream that spreads out over the plain and is lost in 

 the desert sand ; while the systematic and thorough organization of 

 horticultural effort is rapidly forming the sparkling streams that are 

 flowing through our country to gladden the hearts of the people, and 

 which are destined, in time, to converge into the majestic river that 

 will bear on her broad bosom the rich, life-giving fruits of our labor to 

 feed the nations of the earth. 



Horticulture is of divine origin and was committed to our first par- 

 ents in Eden; and as we trace it down through the annals of time, we 

 notice its wonderful influence over man in the historic fact that the 

 most powerful nations that have lived, and that have reached the 

 highest point in the scale of civilization, have been those that paid the 

 greatest attention to horticulture. 



