INDIANA HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 175 



Lexington to Yorktown; Lincoln, Garfielcl, Wilson and many others of 

 lesser fame, you have Cain, the first murderer. King Ahab, Queen Jezebel, 

 and many others of equal criminal tendencies. But there is no more moral 

 or religious class than the husbandmen; they live near Nature and Na- 

 ture's god; they believe in protecting virtue and repressing vice; they be- 

 lieve that virtue is iml)edded in the very constitution of Nature, and to 

 ignore this fundamental fact brings in its Avake moral bankruptcy. 



No vocation so safe, free and independent as yours; while your mem- 

 bers are so vast, but rarely does one of them go into bankruptcy, while 

 ninety-three per cent, of merchants fail to gain a competency. God has 

 I)erniitted you to live in the grandest age, and in the best government on 

 the face of the gIo])o. This is an age of mora) purity, activity, and ad- 

 vancement, and the idle youth mortgages the possibilities of the future, 

 and vicious habits are but the deadly Upas shadow of moral and financial 

 death. The man Avho succeeds must not only be equal to the emergency, 

 but must be able to create an emergency where none exists. Men are not 

 so much the product of the times as the times are what men make them. 

 jMen in this age can not rest upon the honors acquired by their ancestors, 

 or their own past acts, or knowledge; the iiuestion is not what you know, 

 but Avhat you can do. It is truly an age of the survival of the fittest. 

 This is pre-eminently the land of the young man; they conduct and con- 

 trol the affairs of this country as do the young men of no other country 

 on the globe. Our institutions develop the youth. You have a class of 

 schools that not only furnish knowledge, but train their students in their 

 application of it. There is no cutting across lots to success in horticul- 

 ture, as the most of you well know. You are progressive, and have kept 

 time with the march of events, and have secured recognition at the hands 

 of our government, and one of your number is among the advisers of the 

 chief magistrate of the nation. We have, 1 am informed, an agricultui'al 

 output of $S,O0l),O<JO,UUO, and Avith five per cent, of the Avorld's population 

 and seven per cent, of its area, Ave are al)out equal, industrially, to half 

 the remainder of mankind. Husbandry is the foundation stone of our pi"os- 

 perity, the keystone in the arch of our government. From the farm come 

 our greatest thinkers, statesmen, Avarriors and patriots. Around the farm 

 fireside the mother instills into her sons and daughters the loA^e of God 

 and country. I look back to the old farm life of my youth Avith great 

 pleasure; those were halcyon days, oases in the desert of life. I am 

 most happy to meet you today. AIIoav me to again extend to you, on 

 behalf of the citizens of our fair city of Franklin, a most hearty welcome. 



RESPONSE BY PRESIDENT W. W. STEVENS. 



Ladies and Gentlemen— I Avill say in response to the Mayor's address 

 that if any of us entertained a doubt about meeting with a cordial wel- 

 come here from the good people of Franklin and Johnson County, I think 

 that doubt has now been dispelled. 



