TWENTY-FIRST ANNUAL MEETING. 155 



these colleges whom we have asked to be with us to-ni^ht, 

 and I have the honor to introduce to you President Luther of 

 Trinity. 



Dr. Luther: Air. Toastmaster and Ladies and Gentle- 

 men : I was considerably at a loss to know what I could have 

 to say to a pomological society, that has to do with fruit. I 

 knew that I myself was a lemon, and I see that you have our 

 peach of a mayor here. (Laughter). If the Governor had not 

 gone out I should not even have ventured to make a remark 

 or two about His Excellency further than to say that we can 

 well understand and congratulate him that his political friends 

 are pretty well determined that his term of Governor shall be 

 a "pair." (Laughter). 



I have been interested in fruit ever since the first time 

 when one day I got caught in a tree that belonged to a man 

 not my father, and when the Governor was talking about 

 fruit raising in this state I did not know how it happened, but 

 for some reason my mind went back to a very humble fruit thai 

 is rather in disgrace now, and which indeed is getting rather 

 hard to find, and yet I had in mind the gatherings we used 

 to have in the old country town when we went after the hum- 

 ble and unostentatious huckleberry. I wonder whether it is 

 true that the boys and girls are now forbidden to hunt after 

 the succulent huckleberry. It is one of the things, or one of 

 the joys that I have looked back to in my boyhood, a good 

 while ago, for there is no greater happiness than to take a 

 tin pail, with a cup to stick them in, and go off to the hill- 

 sides and wrest the festive fruit from the bushes. It is one 

 of the pleasures of life that I can look back upon. I would 

 like to go huckleberrying again to see if the berries are real- 

 ly as large as they seem to be in my imagination. I hope 

 that your children will know the pleasures of such a trip, and 

 I plead with you to give the boys and girls at least a chance 

 in that direction. You can tell them to put up the bars. They 

 won't do it, but you can tell them. (Laughter.) And you 

 can avoid making a scene about it until after they get 

 through. That may look to you as though it was a crime, 



