STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 319 



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One word more, Mr. President; and now I want the attention of 

 the millionaires, as I see several of them present. As we have 

 looked admiringly and may be with a little envy to-day upon the 

 smiling face in marble of the sturdy old merchant in Girard College, 

 have not some of you on this occasion, or have you not at some 

 other time, had the thought come into your mind, *' Oh, what 

 ■could I do with my wealth to create such a memorial as this insti- 

 tution? What would do so much good, what would make me so 

 honored and so loved as this ? What other institution can I endow, 

 that will give me a place among the few names that are not to fade 

 out of the memory and records of man, and enable me, if perchance 

 I shall be permitted, when the great change comes, whatever it is, 

 to retain an interest in earthly scenes, to look over my work in 

 this life and watch and enjoy its beneficent results hereafter?" It 

 ma}' seem to you that the places of great endowments are all filled, 

 that nothing else can be devised beyond the commonplace; but, 

 gentlemen, the philanthropist who comes forward to found and 

 endow a school of Horticulture and Forestry in the Northwest will 

 provide for the greatest need of the times and for all future time in 

 that golden empire, and will place his figure in bold relief against 

 the Western sky, to be gazed upon with veneration and affection, 

 and grow brighter and grander in the view, and when in the far 

 future mere military heroes shall be forgotten or looked upon as 

 curiosities of a barbarous, or semi-barbarous past, every forest in 

 the West, every improved fruit or flower, every improvement of 

 the face of nature in city or country, from the advancement of the 

 culture of plants, every happ^^ home, will be associated with his 

 name. The whole question, whether hundreds of square miles of 

 the Northwest shall remain or relapse into a desert, or be made to 

 blossom into a land of homes, — the question whether other hun- 

 dreds of square miles shall wait, for generations, to grow comfortable, 

 or, by the short cuts of knowledge, prove horticulture and forestry 

 a relief to those who are there now or are soon to follow, — can be 

 solved by such an institution, liberally endowed, as no other means 

 can do it. And when horticulture and forestry shall become estab- 

 lished over the West by such an institution, nothing else can so 

 train young men and young women in these learned professions, 

 to continue the work to the end of time. Our State colleges of 

 Agriculture are doing all they can for these sciences, but their 

 means are too limited, and their liberty is too circumscribed by 

 lack of patience and appreciation of the average politician who 

 goes to the Legislature. I am sorry to say they are not all the 



