

SUMMER MEETING AT BROOKFIELD. 31 



NIGHT SESSION. 



Meeting called to order by the President. 



Music by the choir was rendered in a very excellent manner; after 

 which was read a paper, 



ADVANTAGES TO BE DERIVED FROM HORTICULTURAL 



SOCIETIES. 



G. W. MARTIN, BROOKFIELD, MO. 



The first great gift of God to man was a garden, in which we are 

 told in Holy writ, He caused to grow every tree that is pleasant to the 

 sight, and good for food. In the very beginning, then, when God 

 created the heavens and the earth, it was the will of the Creator that 

 the first man should be the first gardener, and that the being created 

 in His own image should find no nobler pursuit than the culture of fruit 

 and flowers in the virgin soil of the garden of God ; and when God 

 said, " It is not good that man shall be alone, I will make a helpmeet 

 for him," and when in obedience to the will of God the eyes of the 

 first woman — fairest flower of them all — looked upon a new-made 

 world, the foliage of the trees waving in the gentle winds that floated 

 over the garden of Eden, laden with the fragrance of fruit and flowers,, 

 welcomed the second and greatest gift of God to man. 



Then was the first horticultural society organized. Its members, 

 Adam and Eve, the first woman and the first man; the father and the 

 mother of the human race, and the prize at the first fruit show was 

 doubtless awarded to the "golden pomegranates of Eden." 



Other societies, men of other callings, boast of an ancient origin ; 

 but which of them all goes back to the grand old gardener and his 

 wife ? What other society, what other vocation, traces its origin to the 

 time when this great globe sprang into perfect existence, fresh from the 

 hand of the Master. Old and new, ancient and modern, through all 

 the centuries from the beginning until now, a diligent student of the 

 book of nature, it possesses the wisdom of age and the vigor of youth . 

 hoary with the antiquity of ages, and yet as the rose-bud in spring when 

 nature has stretched forth her magic wand and with its life-giving touch 

 brought forth the warmth and bloom and fragrance of life from the 

 chill and darkness aud gloom of death, thus emphasizing the great lesson 

 of immortality taught alike by nature and by revelation. As ancient 

 as the sun, and yet as new as the tiny sprout just peeping from the 

 bosom of mother earth. Ancient with the garnered wisdom of the past ; 

 modern with the latest thought and research of to-day. 



