104 MISSOURI STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



He gave to man physical, mental and spiritual powers and great possi- 

 bilities, and placed all the beasts of the field, and the fowls of the air 

 and the fish of the sea under his control, and said unto him : " Occupy 

 till I come ! " This means labor, both mental and physical. The thorns 

 and thistles and weeds are the consequences of a later transaction. 



But let me not be unmindful of my motto or caption. If I do not 

 wish my essay to fail of the result aimed at, proof must be furnished to 

 verify the proposition. So allow me to say right here that in every 

 civilized nation on this footstool, the highest enconium of praise which 

 can be awarded to a man, is this: by his industry and diligence, by 

 honesty and integrity, by study and perseverance, he rose from the 

 lowest even to the topmost round of the ladder. From the ranks as a 

 private he became a governor or a general and a president. From the 

 office boy he became a bank president. The newsboy by the same 

 qualifications became editor and proprietor of an influential journal 

 The boy of the towpath became a college professor and the president 

 The rail-splitter and the flatboat hand attains to the highest office in the 

 gift of the people. The tanner becomes a general and a president, and 

 an honored guest of kings and potentates. Did labor degrade any one 

 of these 1 Does not the humble toil and origin of such men form the 

 gold and precious stones in the frame- work of thetr portraits"? 



Some people imagine that kings and queens and such like 



quality people do nothing but sit in their thrones " in purple robes 



arrayed," with their crowns on their heads and their scepters in their 



hands, surrounded by their courtiers in splendid regalia and wearing 



the insignia of their office and power, varied at intervals by feasting 



and fetes, and nothing to do. I venture the assertion that most of the 



reigning monarchs of Europe, or perhaps of the civilized world, put 



more hard work into every twenty-four hours of each day than do our 



or their own government employes, whose eight hours of service count 



a day. It has long been the fashion of princes even to acquire a trade 



or an art which would insure them a livelihood in great reverses of 



fortune not only, but also to enable them to judge fairly of a day's 



work of their subjects in any department of labor. Peter the Great 



of Bussia learned to make a shoe, and he also incognito worked as a 



ship carpenter. One of the busiest of men with brain and brawn 



was the consort of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, called the good. 



One of the princes of Prussia, now living, is a good printer, and each 



one of them has some trade. Even the emperor of the heathen Chinee 



confers dignity upon labor, by holding the plow once a year. That 



"grand old man" of England, who ruled the realm of Great Brittain 



more even than the queen herself, as an octognarian practices wood- 



