L900.] essays. 33 



a flower-garden that exists outside of the minds of different men 

 that can equal them, none that I have ever seen, that can equal 

 the pictures that are turned out by the printing-press of John 

 Lewis Chi Ids. 



I suppose there are people who have had similar experiences. 



The future of this world depends upon one thing, among 

 others, an essential thing, and that is, How shall we make the 

 future better than the past ? 



If you could trace, as I said at first, the influence of this society 

 through the houses and home lives of the people around about 

 this State, you will find that you have partially answered this 

 question. You have beauty where there would have been but 

 desolation and waste, were it not for the endeavors and activities 

 of this society. That is the crucial question of life : How to- 

 morrow can be made better than today ; how the generation 

 that will succeed us will be worthier, stronger, better and nobler 

 than even those who are trying, with many a toil and many a 

 tear, to make the world ready for their coming. Flowers help 

 us to answer this question. I hardly know of any unconscious 

 teacher who does that better than they. Take any flower, I 

 hardly care which one you select — any one will do — I mean any 

 one that has had years of culture, like the carnation, or the tine 

 rose or the sweet pea; and it is a fact that if you look into it 

 very closely and think about it (for the disclosure of truth de- 

 pends altogether upon the measure of thought you give to it) 

 you will discover that in that flower there is so much of man 

 and so much of God. All the perfect flowers, if we listen to 

 them, tell us so much of the exercise of Divine kindness and 

 foiethought, so much of human effort, so much of embodied 

 intelligence ; the best things in the floral world, without excep- 

 tion, convey that message to man. 



You take a flower in a state of nature — a wild flower ; it is 

 very beautiful I know, some of them are beautiful indeed, but 

 it has certain things in it, certain frailties, certain elements of 

 imperfection, generally speaking, so that it lasts but a little 

 while ; frequently it will be immature, and yet there is one 

 thing in that "natural flower" as we call it ordinarily, that 



