392 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



duce ; you are giving a value to this state in dollars and cents that 

 cannot now be measured. And the other part of what you are 

 doing, the garden work, the interest in flowers, in the creation 

 of beauty and in creating a taste for beauty, is to be by no means 

 underestimated. If you men do not feel it as much as you 

 might, there are those under your roofs who do feel it — there 

 are the wives and daughters ; not perhaps those of the more in- 

 telligent men of the state like yourselves, but those whom you are 

 trying to raise and lift up to stand on the platform you stand on 

 and have the interest you feel. There are in all of these homes 

 women whose souls naturally feed upon beauty, and who unless 

 they have beauty to feed upon will grow dull and commonplace ; 

 and the man who loves flowers, and the man who makes it possi- 

 ble for every one in the state to have flowers, and the man 

 who multiplies the varieties that all tastes in the state may be 

 gratified, is doing a beneficent and a noble work ; and these old 

 men who have grown gray in the service and who have put their 

 hearts into the little plants they were trying to raise and into 

 the methods of future development of the raising of fruit, may 

 well rejoice at the opening of this century that they have so far 

 cleared the way that the younger men coming on will be able to 

 complete what they have intended to do. And if there is now 

 any doubt whatever as to the possibilities of our climate, if any 

 one still fears that this climate is too cold for the permanent 

 raising of apples, I would suggest that if our whistling friend, 

 Mr. Ellis, could be put in some of our forests during the winter^ 

 the public faith in the climate of Minnesota would be greatly 

 strengthened, as all the people would naturally suppose that 

 entire flocks of birds had taken up their permanent residence in 

 Minnesota because the climate was so benign. I have said in a 

 few words what I think about the work of the Horticultural So- 

 ciety, and now I come to my text, "The Nobility of Service." 



I want to say that a selfish life is never a noble life, and I 

 want to say that a life of unselfish service is never anything but 

 a noble life, and that the men who are trying to do something 

 not for themselves but for the good of the state and of the people 

 who shall live here in the years to come, who as they create a 

 new species of fruit are thinking of the good coming to the 

 state in which they live and to future generations of people — 

 are the men who in a really altruistic spirit are serving in a 

 way that is truly noble. There is no higher ideal for any man, 

 there can be no higher ideal, than Jesus Christ, and he leaving 



