134 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [11*00. 



and it is only by the preaching and practice of those esthetically 

 inclined that ugliness is kept from making the earth a dreary 

 and unhandsome place. 



It is with difficulty that the rapacious lumbermen are kept 

 from cutting down every forest. The quarrymen are beginning 

 to blow up the Palisades on the Hudson, and the vendors and 

 promoters of electrical and water power are destroying many 

 beautiful waterfalls by diverting the water into artificial channels. 

 Traders disfigure the highways by hideous advertisements. Our 

 beautiful birds are being exterminated. This is all wrong, and 

 it is all the more wrong because in most cases it is unnecessary. 

 John Ruskin, whose soul abhorred ugliness and admired beauty 

 in all its varied forms, declared that "industry without art is 

 brutality"; and Emerson said "the beautiful rests upon the 

 foundations of the necessary." 



Surely it should be one of the purposes of an horticultural 

 society to teach people to make their homesteads beautiful as 

 well as useful, and to love nature and the best literature. Every 

 one who has attended the exhibitions, the lecture courses and 

 the banquets of this Society during the past few years will admit 

 that it has performed its duties in this respect. This banquet is 

 the closing entertainment of the public meetings for this season, 

 and I feel sure that after you have listened to the gentlemen 

 whom I shall call upon to respond to the toasts of the evening 

 you will feel that the last meeting is as good as any of the 

 others. 



I have the pleasure of introducing to you Rufus B. Dodge, 

 Mayor of our city and the Farmers' candidate as Representative 

 to Congress. 



Mr. Dodge said, I propose to relieve my mind and possibly 

 the minds of others by stating to you that I am not a candidate 

 of the Farmers, nor of anybody else, for Congress. Considering 

 the condition of affairs I deem it a very appropriate time to make 

 that statement now, and I make it seriously. After several good 

 natured jokes the Mayor said, 



By the work of this Society the attention of a very large 

 portion of our community is directed into channels which cannot 



