114 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
terday. The trees are there, still growing. From there I went 
to Minneapolis, and I have been dabbling in trees since I went 
there, sometimes successfully and sometimes unsuccessfully. 
As Mr. Cutler said in his paper, there have been shadows as 
well as sunshine: I want tosay to-night, that as I look back 
over the work that I have done, the pleasantest recollection 
that I have of that work is the fact that I believe that there are 
many boys and girls in the state of Minnesota who can say they 
have enjoyed luscious berries and delicious fruit because of the 
talks I have had with their parents, trying to induce them to 
plant fruits and berries, and telling them how to do it. In ‘66 
and 67 I was one of those despised creatures, a tree agent. I 
tramped on foot all over the hills and prairies of Wabasha 
county in 1866, inducing the farmers, wherever I could, to buy 
the Hyslop crab apple, Doolittle raspberries and Red Dutch 
currants. Some of those crab apple trees are bearing yet. In 
the winter of 1866, I obtained some scions from a man by the 
name of Benedict, in Wabasha, and in the evenings we grafted 
a hundred or a hundred and fifty perhaps, and during the win- 
ter I finished up the grafting of those scions on some roots that 
I had raised in a garden out by the falls. Those trees, many 
of them, are bearing yet in different parts of Minnesota. Being 
situated out on the prairie I was unable to meet with the horti- 
cultural society, and I don’t suppose anyway that I could have 
raised money enough to pay the railroad fare in coming to their 
meetings. Iwas too badly crippled with the rheumatism to 
walk, and so I stayed at home. (Laughter). Idid not meet 
with the society when the records were made up and so there 
was nothing said about my name in the list. I have closely 
watched the work of the society all these years and have been 
very much interested in it, and the first matter that I ever wrote 
in a newspaper upon horticultural affairs was an article that I 
wrote for the Wabasha Herald, when Frank Becket was editor, 
telling people how to grow and care for black raspberries. I 
remember that one man, on the strength of that article, or- 
dered a thousand raspberries and planted them. At that time 
there was not a nursery in the state. [I remember the meeting 
in Rochester, in 1867. I remember the talks that we had in re- 
gard to planting different kinds of trees and how much I was 
laughed at on account of my enthusiasm over the Duchess ap- 
ple. But my enthusiasm was well grounded. Friend Mitchell, 
of Iowa, had some of the finest Duchess apple trees I have ever 
seen in the country. Well, ever since that time I have been 
