2] 8 ANNUAL REPORT 



feel a deep interest in its welfare, and I believe my name was first 

 upon the roll of members. We have been working along in this 

 line, but we old pioneers are beginning to show the trace of time. 

 We are getting to dread stepping over the high places and prob- 

 ably in a short time we will be among the number that will be 

 taken off the stage, perhaps out of the stage of existence, and we 

 feel a great anxiety for the welfare and prosperity of this society, 

 because we believe that the state horticultural society has a 

 wonderful mission to perform. The mission of the state horti- 

 cultural society is to make the wilderness blossom as the rose, it 

 is to build up all over the prairies and hillsides and valleys of this 

 great northwest, the most fruitful and the most beautiful farms 

 and homesteads; places that will be a paradise, places so beautiful 

 to live in, that the birds, of the tropics, will come up and make 

 their homes with us. It is in this work we feel so much interest, 

 and we want to know who are going to step into our shoes, and we 

 are glad to know that there is a good large class of young men — 

 we call them boys but they are our future harvest hands — that are 

 qualifying themselves to carry on the active work of agriculture 

 and horticulture in Minnesota and to take our place, and do work 

 far better than we have been able to do. Gentlemen, some of you 

 may think that the pursuit of agriculture is a hard way to make a 

 living, but it is the easiest method I know of, to make a good 

 honest living, and raise up a family about you and enjoy the world 

 as you go along, and be pretty sure of a little competence at the 

 end of that time to make easy your declining years. The pursuit 

 of agriculture, places you right in close communication with 

 nature, — nature's heart and nature's God, and you can be educating 

 yourselves and drawing nearer to nature from the time you leave 

 your school room until you lay down your work here upon earth. 

 I shall hope to hear that the great majority of you have gone from 

 the school to the plow, not to draw a better furrow than your 

 fellow citizens, but to develop the agricultural resources of the 

 state of Minnesota and the whole northwest, knowing how to best, 

 plant the seed to raise the future forest which shall break these 

 terrible winds that sweep over us, and that you will be better pre- 

 pared for all those things, and for the development and growing of 

 fruits, and raising the future apple, and plum and strawberry, &c, 

 than we have been. 



I bid you Godspeed and thank you for the encouragement you 

 give us by your presence here. (Applause. ) 



President Elliot. We have here with us quite a number of 

 others that we would like to call upon but time will not permit 



