128 THE CONNECTICUT POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



across a family in which the children are being starved, 

 running around barefooted, as I found a family down in East 

 Hartford the other day, and my heart was opened. Those 

 trees were old weather-beaten things that never had had any 

 chance or opportunity, or any care or food, or any tending, or 

 any nursing, great holes where the limbs had been broken ofif, 

 where the owls, and the bugs and the beetles and the bats 

 found their nesting places ! and all that within a few miles of 

 the city of Hartford, where the Pomological Society meets 

 every winter. I think it is ingratitude, and I have said a good 

 many times that I thought the sin of young America was the 

 sin of ingratitude. We don't begin to appreciate our blessings, 

 and it does seem to me that if there is any farmer around this 

 neighborhood that is guilty, let it come down into your miser- 

 able soul to-night, and resolve you won't let it happen again. 

 (Applause.) It is a sin of base ingratitude for a farmer to 

 allow these friends of his household, the most health-giving 

 food that he can provide for his family, that will cheer an ev- 

 ening by the fireside, that will keep a family in cheer throughout 

 the winter, that which can please a poor neighbor's table, with 

 which he can get many good solid shekels with which to 

 advance his entire enterprise, and the friends that shade him 

 in the hot days of summer. Have we taken care of them as 

 we should? Are we taking advantage of the vast opportuni- 

 ties given us by this wonderful climate, given us in this soil 

 that God designed should bring forth fruits for his children 

 in great productiveness? I can't tell you how to do it, I 

 simply want to speak this word, and I wish I might reach a 

 lot of others who need it more than you do, but be firm and 

 vigilant, and go through the length and breadth of this state 

 to tell your neighbors to be kind to these living things that are 

 so generous, whose bowels stretch forth, never having a 

 chance to give you their luscious fruit when every brook from 

 the bogs and hills seems to be inviting you to dig, and it will 

 do you good. 



Well, just this word to you in closing, a word that I love 

 to speak to those who are engaged in any special vocation in 



