largest tienes that may come out to its 2 nectina ame 
and beautiful building and other things to correspond, ~ 
before I leave I hope to see such a thing accomplished. Ve 
lause. ) y 
Mr. Geo. H. Van Houten, (lowa): The time has come when — 
I must leave you, and it may be the last time I may ever be 
able to meet with you. I came among you a comparativ 
stranger; I had met several of your members before, and I hac 
formed avery favorable impression of you. Duty demands 
my presence elsewhere, and in saying to you a word of good | 
bye, I want to give you a single thought or suggestion tha 
came to my mind. It has been my privilege to look over the 
battlefields of Napoleon Bonaparte; it has been my privilege to 
meditate and study upon the life of that man, by some thought 
great, but not so by me; and it has been my privilege to study - 
the lives of other great men, and the thought came to me just 
now that just such men as we see in the pictures before me are | 
the great men of the world. It was Napoleon’s ambition to — 
rule the world, and he waded through fields of blood to accom- 
plish his desire, to gratify his #mbition. These men have 
higher ambitions, and their usefulness has been steadily grow- 
ing, until now you see the broad field which opens out. before 
you; and when the day and year shall come that you shall get — 
to the point where these noble men are standing today, I trust 
that you can look back with the same satisfaction upon your 
work as I know they are looking back upon the work they © 
have accomplished. (Applause). ‘vie 
Mr. C. L. Smith: I was one of the twelve who met in that. — 
little office and helped to organize the Minnesota State Horti 
cultural Society. Sickness and the cares and troubles incident 
to poverty kept me for many years away from the society, but — 
I was planting trees and flowers during that time on the prairies, _ 
and I never lost my interest in horticulture. Some insinuate that 
I have taken almost too much part in the proceedings of the ~ 
society during the last dozen or fifteen years, but I thoroughly 
enjoy the meetings. There is one little scrap of poetry that — 
I like to quote to the young people when I talk to them and try 
to encourage them to plant trees and flowers and familiarize 
themselves with horticulture, and when Brother Harris was 
speaking and when this picture was presented, that little 
couplet kept coming to my mind. It is from one of Whittier’s 
