ANNUAL WINTER MEETING. 93 
known farmers to get the strawberry fever, buy a lot of high priced plants, 
set them out, and perhaps get one or two good crops; but a shadow came 
o’er their dreams. The price obained would hardly pay expenses, weeds 
would grow while they were haying, help would be scarce, and they would 
soon be in the shade. 
With great expectations, some of our horticultural friends have pur- 
chased high-priced grape vines, apple: trees, etc., only to have a shadow 
flit across their pathway. You haveno doubt heard some big stories of 
big crops of fruit grown the past season. Our people are enthusiastic, 
and like to look on the bright side of their profession, but I tell you there 
is not an old horticulturist in Minnesota but what has had many a 
shadow flit across his pathway. 
We will now change the scene and attempt to discern the beacon lights 
along the pathway of Minnesota’s horticulture during the past twenty- 
tive years. When Peter M. Gideon made a display of that beautiful apple, 
the Wealthy, and told how he had obtained it, the old veterans like Har- 
Tis, Stevens, Sias, and others felt like shouting ‘‘Hureka! we have now 
found the pathway along which we shall succeed.” This was one of the 
brilliant lights. Again, I have seen a poor farmer, struggling against 
poverty, obtain a big crop of berries and get a high price for them, which 
made the eyes of mother and children glisten with joy, and gave them 
many comforts that they would have been otherwise deprived of. 
Visit brother Latham’s vineyard in autumn when the vines are loaded 
with luscious grapes, or brother Frisselle’s currant patch, or friend Busch’s 
greenhouses, filled with fine cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes, etc., fresh and 
crisp in the dead of winter, or the greenhouses of friends Mendenhall, 
Nagel and Gould, and see the beautiful flowers, and then say in your 
heart if you can, there are no lights along our pathway. To these we 
may add the great chrisanthemum show, the grand display of fruit at 
the state fair, and the capture of the grand prizes at New Orleans and 
Philadelphia. But to the old veterans in this work who are with us to-day 
the brightest beacons of light have been these annual gatherings, where 
they have met to compare notes and encourage each other in this good 
work. When I first attended these annual reunions, it seemed as though 
the blight had struck the society as well as the apple trees. Scarcely a 
young man was present, and the burden of theirsong was: Whatis blight ? 
How can we stop it? and where did it come from? Brother Harris 
would get up, and, casting a forlorn look over the small audience, express 
a desire to have some plan devised for getting the young people into our 
society. But this is all changed now, aud these old heroes who have 
fought so long and valiently begin to reap their reward. Looking into 
the future, they can safely predict that the day is not far distant when 
this will be a land of fruit. Long live the memory of those who, in the 
midst of poverty and privation, blight and destruction, lifted and dis- 
pelled the shadows, and once more let in the light of hope and success. 
The president then read the following communication and 
poem from J. T. Grimes, Minneapolis, which was received with 
much applause: 
