452 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



will gladden the eyes, and charm the senses ; and as you and your 

 posterity shall come up to these altars with your votive offerings, 

 let all remember with gratitude those who laid the foundations 

 of this Society, and those who have so actively co-operated with 

 us to advance the objects of our institution, and have brought it 

 forward to its present prosperous condition. As the members 

 from time to time congregate in these halls, think you not, that, 

 if these portraits could speak from the canvas, they would bless 

 you for your works? Methyiks they now speak to us, and rejoice 

 with us in the good which this institution has bestowed on the 

 world. 



"And now, remembering those who have gone before, let us 

 extend a hearty welcome to those who are to succeed us. 



"Welcome to our homes, and the beautiful grounds which we 

 have made and planted for your happiness ! Welcome to our 

 fruitful orchards, smiling gardens, and charming landscapes which 

 we shall leave to you ! Welcome to these halls whose walls have 

 resounded so often with cordial greetings and friendly salutations ; 

 where thousands shall minister in the future at .the altars of nature 

 and of art, until perfection shall crown our tables, and gladden our 

 sight, and we shall have exchanged the cultivation of the soil for 

 the culture of the soul ! 



"Welcome to the libraries and to all the privileges and pleas- 

 ures of this Society ; and when at last we shall relinquish our labors 

 on earth, may we fall into the lap of mother earth like the ripened 

 fruits of summer, then to be welcomed to those celestial fields, and 

 to that richer inheritance in the better land where the flower shall 

 never fade, the leaf never wither, the fruit never perish ; to the 

 rewards of a well-spent life on earth, that we may 1 partake of 

 the tree which bears immortal fruit, its bloom on earth, its fruit 

 in heaven." 



The celebration closed with a dinner at Young's 

 Hotel, at which speeches were made by Samuel H. 

 Wales, president of the Rhode Island Horticultural 

 Society, John B. Russell, one of the founders of the 

 Massachusetts Horticultural Society, William C. Strong, 

 ex-president, Benjamin P. Ware, Henry Weld Fuller, 



