STATE HORTICr^LTURA.L SOCIETY. 339 



who have the best, for it is the best that the exhibit adds most value to, 

 and it is a gambling principle to make the losers pay the winner. But 

 let 500 persons of worth meet with ample space and time to compare their 

 products, and a lasting good is tlie result ; but what good can result from 

 the yells of a rabble, as the fast horse drives by? 



Then, again, what did those grand fairs of St. Paul and Minneapolis 

 the past season cost the people in dollars and cents? Say a quarter of a 

 million. And nearly th6 entire sum went into the pockets of fast-horse 

 men and the managers of the fairs, the great agricultural interest only 

 getting meagre offers of reward, and those not all paid, showing conclu- 

 sively that in the judgment of the managers those exhibits are strictly 

 fast-horse carnivals, and the other interests only called in to give respec- 

 tability and enhance the pile of plunder. 



But let us see what the fast horse has done for agriculture, the arts, the 

 sciences, and the civilization of former ages. 



The first history we get of the fast horse is in Arabia, but that he had 

 figured to the ruin of other nations at a more early date than we have 

 record, and that his ruinous results were well understood as early as the 

 time of Moses, is evident from the provision in the Jewish law, forbid- 

 ding the use of the horse in the nation, and that by a general and profuse 

 culture of fruit they soon rose from a horde of ignorant slaves to a great 

 and prosperous nation, with no other speed than that of the slow, trudg- 

 ing donkey. 



They grew their fruits in profusion, and as their fruits grew the people 

 rose in morals and intelligence, and the nation prospered. But alas, for 

 them ! The wise King Solomon, in his pride, introduced the fast horse, 

 and ere an age had sped, pride, ambition, and oppression caused the 

 nation to burst into fragments. Yes, on the slow, trudging donkey they 

 ascended the hill of fame, their pathway lined with the luscious fruit, 

 free to all to gather and eat, but on the fast horse, with dazzling speed, 

 with clouds of dust to mark their route as they rode down a rocky waste. 

 And as they rode down happy, teeming millions dwindled, and by hunger 

 pressed, as captives, they were driven to the four winds of heaven. 



But during all that time the Arab's horse was never allowed to lag. 

 Arabia was once noted for her balmy breezes, her vast fertile plains, her 

 great wealth in agricultural products, with a population variously esti- 

 mated by historians at from forty to one hundred millions; but on the 

 fast horse down she has rode until her fertile lands are desert wastes, her 

 balmy breezes mounted up to great desert storms, often burying whole 

 caravans of slow-drudging, half-starved marauding thieves, now plodding 

 over vast ruins at camel and donkey trudge. 



But while mounted on the fast horse and power yet remained to 

 scatter ruin around, they made conquests of other nations. Palestine 

 and Asia Minor, the then guarded spot of the East, were first to fall to 

 the fast horse and his rider, and to-day, like Arabia, their fertile plains 

 are desert wastes, showing that at the tread of the fast horse fertile fields 



