ANNUAL WINTER MEETING. 123 



Professor Pendergast: Well, perhaps it is not so bad after all, because 

 the admiration and love of flowers does not belong to anyone class. It is 

 not governed by any age or class or previous condition of servitude 

 (laughter), so perhaps an old fellow like I am can see something in flowers 

 to admire, and can see some usefulness in a flower. 



My mind goes back to more than thirty-seven years, to the time when I 

 first came to Minnesota, and after I had wallowed — that is the word — 

 from Minneapolis through those big woods where there never was a rose, 

 and got on to the great bleak prairie, climbed up on a little hill and 

 looked away towards the sunset— it was about the time of sunset — to 

 where it extended black as Erebus and as desolate as the Sahara and as 

 measureless as the sea, I said to myself "what kind of a country, what 

 kind of a region is this that you have come into?" (Laughter.) But I was 

 not inclined to put my hand to the plow and look back, so I stayed, and 

 after a few weeks what a marvelous charge came over the face of the 

 prairie! The green prairie grass sprung up, and ten thousand flowers 

 sprinkled that valley and dotted the meadows. They decorated the hill 

 side and adorned the prairie, and it seemed to me then that this was a 

 goodly land. Well, the existence that had been so dull and dark and 

 dreary had completely changed, and life seemed to oe all joy and happiness. 

 The appearance of those lovely little flowers all around me changed the 

 aspect of affairs completely. Those little flowers were teaching the lesson 

 and setting the example we should all learn and follow; they were living 

 and doing good to others. 



I think of a story that I translated from the French years ago. It was 

 of philosopher who made up his mind that all there was in this world was 

 happiness, and so he set out in pursuit of it; it was always a little ahead 

 of him, and it tantalized him to so often almost reach it, and then have it 

 slip away through his fingers.- In his search for it he saw that the gov- 

 ernment stood in his way, and plotting for its overthrow he was thrown 

 into prison. While there, walking in the dusty court with its high per- 

 pendicular walls on each side, he saw between the tiles of the courtyard 

 a green leaf. He went on, stopped, turned about, went back, got down 

 on his knees and examined it, and went into .his little cell and took the 

 case knife that he had to cut his bread with and picked away the tiling 

 on each side to give it room to grow; then he went into his cell again and 

 got his little cup and poured half of the water in it on to that plant. 

 Every day he did the same. His first thought was of that little plant. 

 Day after day he watched it, for two or three months, and it grew up and 

 burst into full bloom the day he was pardoned out of the prison. He 

 really regretted that he was a free man, because he had taken such an in- 

 terest in that little beautiful flower. , 



He said that he had found the happiness there that he had toiled for 

 and struggled for in vain, for years, and the thought came over him that 

 true happiness was living for somebody else, being something, thinking 

 something, doing something that brought him outside of himself. That 

 was the true secret of happiness. (Applause.) 



Now, that is what these flowers are doing, and the rose more than any 

 other. It is the queen of flowers; there is no other that compares with it or 

 that dares rival it. Take the sesthetic sunflower, for instance, it stands 

 stately, grand, rugged in its complaisance; it is the very picture of rugged 



