430 SEMI-CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY. 



Greeting by a Charter Member. 



C. L. SMITH, PORTLAND, OREGON. 



I hardly know what to say ; there is so much I would like to 

 say and I know that the time is short. I was thinking as I sat 

 here this afternoon, what an inspiration the next annual report 

 of the Minnesota Horticultural Society will be to all the young 

 men and women who read the report of this afternoon program. 



Another thing. The work of these men which have been 

 eulogized was always done through a love of their work. They 

 loved their work, they loved their fellowmen, their work was un- 

 selfish. I don't believe anyone ever gave time and effort to the 

 work of the Minnesota Horticultural Society with the idea that 

 they were going to be materially benefited individually by that 

 work. They attended the meetings and paid their own expenses. 



What better can a man leave, what better record for his 

 children, for his neighbors, than that his best efforts in life have 

 been unselfish. As one of the poets says : 



All hearts grow warmer in the presence 

 Of one who, seeking not his own, 



Gives freely for the sake of giving, 

 Nor seeks for self the harvest sown. 



The harvest has certainly been greater than the sowers 

 ever expected. 



I was an enthusiastic horticulturist fifty years ago, and I re- 

 ally did believe that in the course of fifty years the men and 

 women living in Minnesota, the boys and girls on Minnesota 

 farms, would be able to have perhaps some Duchess apples and 

 Siberian crabs and Transcendent and Hyslop. I think the 

 first work I ever did in Minnesota was to sell some farmer half 

 a dozen Hyslop crab trees. They were pretty good, they were 

 much better than nothing, and they were as good as we thought 

 we would ever get. 



Just a word reminiscent. At the time that the society was 

 organized I was canvassing for the sale of nursery stock for 

 Samuel Morrison, of the old Rochester Nurseries. I don't claim 

 to have been a very bright boy. I never had any schooling, 

 and education. I lived down in southern Indiana among the 

 hoosiers, three years before the outbreak of the war, and I learned 

 to bud and graft. I had a chance to read some old files of the 

 American Horticulturist, edited by Downing, and I had become 



