44 ANNUAL REPORT. 
while gold (that narrows down the heart of man into pure, sordid selfish- 
ness, and creates so much misery, oppression and inhumanity in bop ieee 
world,) is only used to pave the streets! 
I have always had a passionate fondness for flowers; infact, I was*born 
immediately after the crowning of the May Queen, with a flower in my hand 
as well asI can now remember. I think that I must have inherited that 
fondness from my mother, who kept a flower garden which she cultivated 
‘with her own hand, for her own pleasure and that of her friends. It was — t 
separated from the front yard, and also from the vegetable garden, by a nice 3 
fence, and nothing was allowed to roam there except the honey bee; in fact, 
it was kept sacred from everything else—sacred to herself. I was always 
glad when the weeds would get a little the start, and I should be called into 
help subdue them. Her flowers were the handsomest that ever were seen, at 
least I thought so. I’mspeaking now of fifty years ago, before Bliss, Hovey, 
Washburn or: Vick had ever sent out a seed, or the art of hybridizing was 
known. I remember those old-fashioned flowers with reverence still, and 
their names are indelibly stamped upon the tablet of my memory. I remem- 
ber how the beds were laid out and planted. There were her roses, tulips, 
snowdrops, peonies, lilies, flags, sweet-williams, pinks, bachelor’s-buttons, 
_coxcombs, morning glories, china asters, larkspurs, marigolds, holyhocks, 
chrysanthums, four-o’clocks, forget-me-nots, old-man, thyme and devil-in- 
the-bush, with snow-balls and lilacs in the background, and a few honest, 
old-fashioned sun-flowers placed as it were on picket duty around the camp. 
We had no botanical names for our plants in those days, and if any one 
had come to us and asked—Have you the lilium candiaum in your-ground ? 
We should have said no. Delphinium ?* No. Centaurea? No. Convol- 
vulus ? No. Helianthus ? No. Mirabilus? No. -Tragetes? No. Ipo- 
mea ? No; we have not anything which you have named. And then if they 
had pointed out those very plants, and told us that they were the identical 
oOues which they had named, we should have doubted their sincerity or sane- 
ness; and yet who of us would even now say, that our fathers and mothers 
were not as wise in their generation as we are in ours? The poet Pope in 
view of this, once said: 
‘* We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow ; 
Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so.”’ 
When I look back upon those old-fashioned flowers, and compare them 
with the gardens of the present time, and see the improvements that have 
been made by crossing and hybridizing, thus producing new varieties from - 
seed superceding the old in splendor and glory, together with thousands of 
new varieties that have been collected throughout all lands, many of which 
are of great excellence and worth; I feel like Campbell once expressed 
himself, when looking over the old fields of England, where his feet in boy- 
bood had brushed the early morning dew in search of buttercups and 
daisies : 
“Ye field flowers, the gardens eclipse you ’tis true, 
But, ye wildlings of nature, I dote upon you, 
For ye waft me to summers of old— 
When my heart was filled with fairie delight, 
And when daisies and buttercups gladdened my sight 
Like treasures of silver and gold.” 
