MEMORIAL HOUR, JOHN S. HARRIS. 325 



the great Court of Courts that further efforts in fruit growing here 

 would be futile. Years of time and labor, a vast sum of money 

 in the aggregate and hopes that had been growing stronger and 

 stronger, until at last they seemed to have reached a long and pa- 

 tiently waited for fruition, were suddenly buried in one frozen 

 grave ! 



Perhaps no victim of that disaster felt the loss it involved more 

 keenly than Mr. Harris did. But though it may have depressed 

 it did not discourage him. In the bright lexicon of the vocabulary 

 of his faith there was no such word as fail ! Though contending 

 with the icy waves of adversity and tossed from crest to crest by the 

 blasts that had shattered the hopes of thousands, he was supported 

 by the life buoy of conviction that the law of adaptation to environ- 

 ment is God's law, and all that is needed to make it effective is faith- 

 ful, tireless, undismayed executives of the law, of which, my lament- 

 ed friend, John S. Harris, was one. 



During that first evening with him he talked long, ably, and 

 with the earnestness that makes common words eloquent, of how 

 that necessary adaptation to our environment was to be accom- 

 plished. In those days a new hope was just becoming buoyant in the 

 fruit grower's breast. Ice-armored Russia was sending to us her 

 frost proof children of Queen Pomona. Surely, Russia's produc- 

 tions, the survivers of her frosts, snows and blasts, would survive 

 and flourish in Minnesota's comparatively mild climate. But my 

 mentor on that never-to-be-forgotten evening, so many years ago, 

 gave emphatic voice to the conviction that the fruits of the' future for 

 this region would not be immigrants but native and to our manner 

 born. It is not cold alone but climatic and soil conditions peculiar 

 to ourselves that all our products must become adapted to before 

 their ultimate possibilities will be realized here. This was his theory 

 then, he talked and wrote voluminously about it since, and all the 

 time the logic of events and the processes of nature were confirm- 

 ing him, and it was because he was thinking and working along 

 natural lines. His ways were ways of pleasantness and truth be- 

 cause they were nature's ways. 



It was this quality of head and heart that caused a prominent 

 member of this society to say, during the last state fair, probably 

 the first one ever held in the state that he did not attend: "We 

 miss Mr. Harris continually. His knowledge of fruits was so com- 

 plete that any disputed point regarding name or variety could be 

 referred to him with the confident assurance that it would be cor- 

 rectly adjudicated." This was because his knowledge was based 

 upon fundamentals. Experience, observation, memory, long and 



