STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 291 



AMERICAN POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY IN 1885. 



Members of the Mississippi Valley Horticultural Society from 

 ■other states: We hope to meet you in Michigan in 1885. We 

 acknowledge your supremacy in oranges, peaches, pears and plums; 

 in some states in the extension of the number of varieties of profit- 

 able apples; in others in the production of winter apples; but when 

 this venerable umpire and patron comes to consider the greatest 

 beauty and quality combined of which the apple is capable, and the 

 character of our outdoor grapes, we may claim the medal again. 

 But the rivalry shall be generous as it is in all strictly horticultural 

 exhibitions ; and whoever wins, the defeated party shall lead the 

 other out for the applause at the footlights before the curtain, and 

 help bestow the wreath of bays. 



[From the banquet at the Green Bay Meeting of the Wisconsin Horticultural 

 Society, in reply to the Following Toast :] 



"DOES THE FLOWER GABDEN PAY r 



My wife, who keeps the statistics in our family, notified me last 

 fall that the clock which tells the years for us had struck fifty-one 

 for the ostensible head of the establishment; and now, as I am on the 

 shady side of life, it is realized more clearly than ever before, that 

 there are some employments for us in this world that pay tolerably 

 well, and yet whose remuneration may not be accompanied by the 

 ■crinkle of greenbacks or the clink of specie rand of all the branches 

 of horticulture that pay us in the pleasures they afford, and in the 

 good they enable us to do, I take the affirmative on the proposi- 

 tion that the flower garden rather has the lead. 



You who do not grow flowers, think you love and admire them. 

 Probably yoa do; I guess everybody loves flowers. But you can 

 never begin to imagine how much pleasure they can confer 

 till you come to have a flower garden, and tend it with your own 

 hands. 



The flower garden pays especially well in its influence upon 

 children in the family. Whatever fixes the attention or engages 

 the affections of the young, either elevates or debases them. When 

 they take to flowers, who ever thought of a bad influence from it? 

 Flowers are as good medicine for the mind as fruits are wholesome 

 for the body. 



