278 MISSOURI STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



the list of created things. Surely we need no greater evidence of the 

 Creator's tenderness towards us than the loveliness everywhere visible 

 in nature. 



Each succeeding season has its own peculiar radiance, its own spec- 

 ial mission tending to bless and benefit humanity, and very seldom do 

 we find a person who cultivates and loves flowers, who does not also 

 acknowledge and worship the Giver of these precious gifts. 



It would be impossible to frame into language the emotions called 

 forth by the occupation of flower culture, or to convey an adequate idea 

 of the pleasure it affords. 



Lamartine, in a little story entitled " Picciola," which word is, I 

 think, of Spanish origin and means small, has more clearly defined the 

 intense happiness which may result from the cultivation of even one lit- 

 tle plant than any other author I have read. ' Picciola " was a tiny p'ant 

 that had crowded its way up between the bricks of a court-yard in which 

 prisoners of St »te were allowed to take their daily exercise, and the 

 small, silent missionary of good, gave hope, joy, love, and eventually 

 liberty, to a despairing, cynical soul, that had been hardened and embit- 

 tered by " man's inhumanity to man." 



To watch the budding and unfolding of a rose, is to grow, insensi- 

 bly, happier and nearer to that perfect life, which animates all things, 



" There is to me 

 A daintiness about all fragrant flowers, 

 That touches me like poetry. 



They blow out with such simple loveliness among 

 The common herbs of pasturage, and they breathe 

 Their lives so unobtrusively, like hearts 

 Whose beatings are too gentle for the world." 



Who does not remember the old-fashioned garden of his grand- 

 mother, where there were always, from early spring until late autumn, a 

 succession of fragrant blossoms. 



Ah, me ! I seem to smell those grass pinks now, and the great 

 purple clusters of the lilacs, the lillies and roses. There were holly- 

 hocks, too, snowballs, snowdrops, blue-bells, and splendid crimson peon- 

 ies. Then there were poppies later on, marigolds, bachelor buttons, and 

 ever so many more annuals. It seems to me that we do not have such 

 great golden marigolds, nor such delicate silken poppies these days, but 

 childhood has a glad radiance peculiar to itself and we out-grow our en- 

 husiasm as the years shadow us, and yet. 



