NINETEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 95 



Mr. H. W. Collingwood: Mr. President, Ladies and 

 'Gentlemen : I do not think I could keep away from the 

 banquet of the Connecticut Pomological Society if I tried. 

 I read the other day of a very dignified bishop in Georgia, who 

 went to visit some friends in the country. The farmer had 

 two very fine, beautiful daughters, as all farmers generally 

 do. At any rate, the bishop found time was rather heavy on 

 his hands, and these two beautiful girls said to him, 

 "Let's go fishing." So they went down to the creek, baited 

 their hooks and began fishing. An old farmer came along 

 and looked over the fence. He was a man that had no re- 

 spect for persons, and so he called out, "Hello friend, how 

 ■do they bite?" The bishop gathered himself together, and 

 he said with some dignity, "Sir, I am a fisher of men." 

 "Well," said the farmer, "you are a sport anyway, because 

 you know your business. You have got the right kind of 

 bait." (Laughter). It was the right kind of bait that 

 brought me over here. 



Some years ago I taught a district school in Michigan. 

 One Saturday night we were invited to Deacon Brown's 

 house, and we all went. Now Deacon Brown did not believe 

 in dancing, but some of us put up a job on Deacon Brown and 

 got him out to the barn to look after a sick cow. While he 

 was gone we took our partners and stood up there in the 

 kitchen for a dance. That was over thirty years ago. And 

 I remember as I stood there with the rest already for the 

 dance to begin, with the fiddle playing, how surprised we all 

 were when the door opened and in came the Deacon. He 

 says, "Stop this right off. Stop it at once. You can't dance 

 in my kitchen." Now Deacon Brown was a strict Methodist, 

 and he broke up the dance. I thought it was all over, but in 

 about five minutes one of the fellows came to me, and he 

 said, "Come on out in the kitchen. We are going to sing 

 the Hartford girls. We are going to form in the kitchen just 

 as though we were going to dance, and we are going to sing 

 the Hartford girls. So I asked Mrs. Brown, the Deacon's 



