ANNUAL WINTER MEETING. 95 
President Underwood: We will now listen to an address en- 
titled ‘‘Reminiscences,” by ex-President A. W. McKinstry, of 
Faribault. 
REMINISCENCES. 
A. W. MC KINSTRY, FARIBAULT. 
Mr. President and Members of the Association: 
The occurrence of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the organization of 
this society offers a favorable opportunity for some review of its progress, 
and especially of matters relating to its early history. Having had the 
honor of serving as its second president, your secretary has kindly invited 
me to attend this meeting and read a paper, and very considerately 
smoothed the way for my acceptance by leaving the subject entirely to iny 
own selection. . 
As it has been many years since I have been an active participant in its. 
deliberations, during which interval my attention has been mainly en- 
grossed by other and very exacting pursuits, it appears to me that very 
little that I could say with reference to the necessities and the demands 
of the present would interest or instruct. But I have thought that per- 
haps some early recollections concerning the period of my active member-- 
ship might not prove unacceptable, at least to the older brethren of the 
fraternity. Ido not propose to go into any historical review, but simply 
to give in a desultory way some fragmentary recollections that the anni- 
versary has suggested to my mind. And first, perhaps, the question will 
occur to some of my hearers of a practical turn—and most of the Minne- 
sota horticulturists come under that head—how did you, who are neither- 
a nurseryman or a farmer, chance to be selected president of a horticul- 
tural society? A properinquiry which I will proceed to answer to the best 
of my ability. : 
My connection with the society dates from October, 1867. The days of my 
boyhood were passed in a region which has been termed ‘“‘the garden of 
New England,” being the valley of the Connecticut, in which the proxim- 
ity of the river, the protection afforded by the bordering hills from winds, 
and the alluvial soil, rendered the cultivation of the apple, the peach and 
the pear, as well as of the small fruits, a matter of little difficulty. There 
were orchards in abundance of grand old apple trees, some of them having” 
been fifty and even seventy-five years in bearing, and there were occasion- 
ally farmers who could pride themselves upon being able to enter upon 
the winter with forty barrels of cider in the cellar. Those of my hearers 
who remember the music sent forth in the early October morning when 
the wooden cylinders of the village cider mill first commenced their creak- 
ing revolutions, Summoning every barefooted urchin to hunt for the best 
straw and rush to the scene of operations to imbibe the liquid nectar 
which trickled in ruddy streams from the ‘‘cheese” into the receiving tub, 
will understand how such associations must influence plastic youth in the: 
direction of a love for fruit growing and all that pertains thereto. At the 
age of sixteen, long before Horace Greeley had thrilled the country with 
his sage practical advice, “gu west, young man,” I had acted in the spirit 
of it and found myself in one of the most favored fruit growing sections. 
of the country, on the south shore of Lake Erie in. western New York, @ 
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