HOW WE CONDUCT OUR FLOWER SHOW. 3885 
business end of considering the city. The afternoon is largely for children, 
with a dress parade of some kind, costumes, etc. We found refreshments, 
good social personalities and house visitations indispensable. Looking up 
flowers is very interesting work. People are often unaware that they have 
things worth sending until some one tells them. One year fancy stalls were 
a great feature, the next the general decorations, such as real landscape 
views, with streams and fountains in miniature: Briefly, an art display 
with nature in the center. 
Our leading prizes are good; they must be to get people to respond, 
otherwise who would attempt a floral piece, such as a battle ship, or medal- 
lion with soldier or sailor life size. The exhibits were few but very choice. 
A ship outlined upon a large easel, grounded with parsley, won a fifty-dollar 
bicycle. The second prize, $10.00 in gold, was taken by a handsomely built 
war vessel, with the most minute details in everlasting flowers. We no- 
tice the larger the number of smaller prizes the greater the interest, and 
careful classifying is necessary. Paper flowers were made a feature, too. 
Wild flowers in large groups, and house plant collections received hand- 
some prizes; window boxes, and other novelties, etc. 
Our latest change to a “Flower Show Society,” has made the floral part 
more prominent. Hundreds of periodicals on scientific gardening; also 
quantities of bulbs and seeds, were given as premiums, and much knowledge 
disseminated. Judging is always a difficulty, and our management find an 
expert florist necessary. He also cares for the plants and decides the points 
of merit with them, for when a decorated baby is on show in a carriage 
a multitude is needed for safety. And we often have to fall back upon our 
principal patron, who delights in giving every one a blue ticket. This, 
however, is risky. We keep out the charity element; it only disgusts and 
discourages. To be disappointed helps character building. Labor is never 
unrewarded when knowledge is gained, for though the background of 
pleasure is often pain, while we are being educated we are also educating, 
for we have the fact before us that in our western towns beautiful things 
have not entered into our lives as they should. “Ever to Peter Bell a 
primrose was yellow,’ but many of our people are color blind, or the re- 
ward of toil to our flower raisers would be ten-fold. We rarely love flowers 
for their own sake, but as fashion dictates, or why the thousand bare dining 
tables, the cheerless sick rooms, while wagon loads follow the dead to their 
graves. On the other hand they are hoarded up too much in some cases, 
often shutting out the light from more valuable human flowers living at a 
poor dying rate in painted cans. 
What an impetus the eastern pot industry would receive if we would 
spend a few cents in proper receptacles, and change our seeds. Life is too 
brief to potter over them unless you have a large house to beautify, a living 
to get, or employment to give to others. 
Then, last, our show is well supported by ‘‘society” of all classes, with 
that truly better class, who, having their lives enriched in externals, share 
them, finding horticulture preferable to pauperculture, working out their 
club ideals with the workers through work. This year we sent.a thousand 
packages of seeds to the city schools, where any tactful teacher can readily 
enlist a child’s support in utilizing waste corners. What has been done can 
be done again. Millions of shows in flora came from one house of glass— 
the Crystal Palace. So then in conducting a flower exhibit we must con- 
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