150 ANNUAL REPORT. 
present home, barrels of apples marked Rhode Island Greening, Spitzen- 
burg, Baldwin, Jeneton, Swaar, Golden Russet, besides many other kinds ; 
and also, marked Chelsea, Michigan. And then I know that they came from 
the town of my boyhood; and that many of them must have come from the 
trees that many years agomy own hands planted. Then I feel that another 
is not altogether reaping of what by me was sown; I, too, am getting my 
reward. 
When we have succeeded, as we shall by and by, in the not far distant 
future, in establishing the fact that we have varieties of our own raising 
equally good with those, and perfectly adapted to our soil and climate, then 
will our occupation, though none the less praiseworthy, be more profitable. 
Neither will our agents be obliged to go from house to house, and almost on 
bended knee entreat people, for experiment at least, to purchase a few of 
our choicest varieties, which in the end are only taken to get rid of the 
agent, who, the moment he is gone, they regret that they did not assist in 
leaving with the toe of their doot. But, as it was, they did not order with- 
out first getting a guarantee from the agent against everything, even to the 
hatchet of their hopeful George Washington. What Minnesota has already 
accomplished assures us, that all that we are now seeking for, will finally 
be obtained * * *. But for awhile we will dismiss this train of thought, 
to be resumed further on. And here I will say, that notwithstanding in my 
boyhood I entered with so much zeal into the field of fruit growing; not- 
withstanding I then planted a nursery, raised and sold fruit trees, with the 
proceeds of which I in part paid my way into another field of labor, it has 
not been my life work. Long before I laid aside the pruning, the grafting 
knife and the dibble; long before my father’s household had been dissolved 
by marriages, by departures and by deaths, I had chosen for myself a differ- 
ent vocation. These remarks may appear entirely out of place. But, had 
it not been for my labors in another field, I could not now repeat with the 
assurance that I do. My life work, as some of you know, has been the 
practice of medicine and surgery; and in the discharge of those duties I 
have been brought into contact with every grade of society, and into rela- 
tions with various degrees of intellect. From the man who by natural talent, 
united with untiring industry, had attained to the highest round on the 
ladder of fame, to the ignorant boor, who never had a dozen thoughts in all 
his life; from the man in squallor and in rags, who apparently never had 
an aspiration above the realms in which he passed his miserable existence, 
to the person whom by the prestige of his wealth, could lock the halls of 
justice, pollute those seated on its sacred benches, remove the bars that 
restrained the malefactor, and around whom fawning sycophants meanly 
bowed. Or, on the other hand, when, as is often the case, the possessor 
was among the wise and good, with his wealth he would make endowments, 
bestow charities, and by so doing relieve want and distress, thus causing 
the people with one accord to call them blessed. 
But, some one asks, what has all this to do with horticulture? Much, 
indirectly. For I have always been able to observe that in whatever grade 
of society any person might be, he who adorned his home with fruit trees, 
vines and flowers, became by so doing, apparently, elevated above those who 
regarded not those things, but who were otherwise in the same station in 
life. The time devoted to such pursuits lifted him above his surroundings. 
