78 Massachusetts Horticultural Society. 



gratified by being permitted to remain in that station in your Society that 

 I have recently occupied, rather than by an elevation to the one you have 

 thought proper to confer upon me ; but as it seems that your views did not 

 coincide with my inclinations, and having been informed that upon the un- 

 derstood intention of your late President to decline a further service in that 

 office, an opinion prevailed that for some reasons my election as his suc- 

 cessor was deemed advisable and expedient, when the sincerity of the 

 opinion so expressed had stood the test of unanimous suffrages I did not 

 feel wholly at liberty to refuse what you had thought proper to bestow, and 

 decline an office that I had certainly never sought or scarcely even desired 

 to attain. 



This, gentlemen, is both to you and to me an interesting and important 

 occasion — to you, because it confides the presidency of your society to new 

 and untried hands — to me, because it calls me to the discharge of new and 

 untried responsibilities. 



Since the establishment of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, near- 

 ly a quarter of a century — a period, long as it may seem in the life of an 

 individual, yet brief and transitory, as I trust and believe, in the existence 

 of this society — nearly a quarter of a century has rolled away, carrying off 

 with the years that are thus gone, a generation of the human family, and, as 

 a consequence, very many of those who were originally the promoters and 

 founders of this institution. 



This is an occasion then, that, like the anniversary of almost every event, 

 but certainly of a society composed of numerous members, must almost 

 necessarily give rise to emotions of a mixed and very opposite character. 

 It is an occasion that must necessarily recall to our minds, those of our 

 former associates of whom we have been deprived by death. We miss 

 those who once honored the places that we are now called on to fill, to 

 whom we were accustomed to look for counsel and advice, — who, on all like 

 occasions, formerly cheered us with their presence, and who at all times 

 stimulated and excited us by the influence of their example. And espe- 

 cially are these sorrowful remembrances awakened on the present occasion, 

 in consequence of the recent loss by death of one who was the first Presi- 

 dent of the Society, — of one who did so much while living by his teach- 

 ings, his influence, and his example, to cultivate a taste for horticultural 

 pursuits, and to extend and promote a knowledge of horticultural science, — 

 of one, too, who, in all the varied relations of his life, was so eminently en- 

 titled to the respect and esteem that he so universally enjoyed. But while 

 this is an occasion, in awakening our recollection of those whom we have 

 lost, to give rise to a feeling of sadness, — so, too, it is one, in view of the 

 present prosperous and flourishing state of the Society, with from anniver- 

 sary to anniversary an increasing number of members, and constantly in- 

 creasing means of usefulness, calculated to give rise to those of an opposite 

 character, to feelings of joy and self-congratulation ; and in the present 

 consciousness of what we profess, and to what we have attained, our re- 

 grets, as connected with the past, become in a measure alleviated, if they 

 are not diminished ; and the feeling of sadness gives place to a more cheer- 

 ful emotion. 



