220 NEBRASKA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Weeds instead of beaiity. Now you can go there after the liot wind 

 has scorched out and smitten every tender thing, and fruit and orna- 

 mental trees have succumbed, and what is left will endure. What a 

 weeding out of every vine. How the spruces went down ! Wiiite, 

 Norway, Black Hills, and Douglas dazed and staggered, not killed. 

 But there is the Ponderosa in all its rugged beauty, not one n)issing; 

 and there the Platte and Rocky Mountain cedars and the Concolor, 

 and there the Chinese Arbor Vitse. These five trees went unscathed 

 through the fiery furnace, and perhaps I should also mention the Aus- 

 trian pine. These all seemed to lift up their heads as to an old friend 

 and said, "Did you say drouth? We have not noticed it." So there 

 are things which will stand, and to these we give preference, and I 

 know that amid the most adverse circumstances of hail and blizzard^ 

 and sirocco, there are things which will endure the test. I lor one and 

 with others have spent a good many thousands finding out what I could 

 not do, but it is worth thousands more to find out what we can do,, 

 and there is no use in being discouraged. If the phlegmatic Hol- 

 lander can smoke his pipe complacently while he raises his great Hol- 

 steins below the sea lev^el, the Nebraska farmer should not be discour- 

 aged while he lives over an underground ocean. One uses a windmill 

 to pump out the ocean, the other can use the same power, to a limited 

 extent at least, to raise the inland sea. Artificial screen and shelters 

 do much. I had one-half an acre under screen — an artificial forest, 

 and thus sheltered it was wonderful how trees would grow and flow- 

 ers would bloom, and how easy it was to raise seedlings and tender 

 vegetables. Let a man think, study, read, and experiment, and with 

 resources already at hand, he will be amazed at what he can accom- 

 plish. 



I once visited the home of Webster with his old pastor, Rev. Alden, 

 descendant of John and Priscilla. A poor piece of ground, but the 

 touch of genius was there. There was the little office where he forged 

 those mighty thunderbolts more vigorous than those welded by the 

 hand of iron. There was where, while dying, he had the cattle driven 

 by his window that he might see their honest faces and bid them good- 

 bye. I looked over it, all that barren farm transformed into beauty, 

 and then I wished we had the brains of a Webster to run every farm 

 in Nebraska, and what a transformation would come over us. What 

 we want is more brains and less weeds, smaller farms, better kept, and 



