112 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1898. 



Hampshire. I have made, you see, a thorough study of the 

 question. 



AHusions have been made, and properly, to our sisters in the 

 cultivation of flowers and the fine arts. I used to notice on 

 the mountains of New Hampshire a red house or hut, and then 

 if I looked carefully I would see a plot of flowers at the window 

 or door, showing that someone of refinement lived there and 

 had a home there in those barren, bleak mountains. 



Our friend from the West, I should know by his breezy 

 style had been out on those great prairies. I was in Kansas 

 ten years ago last summer from the early spring until the latter 

 part of July. By the first of July there came on one of those 

 droughts that dry up every green thing. I saw thousands of 

 acres of great rank grass, such grass as I had never seen before, 

 go out of sight practically in two or three weeks. And what is 

 this I see on the part of the ladies, who have a plot of flowers 

 in their front yards? When the thermometer was up to a 

 hundred or a hundred and ten degrees, two or three hours in 

 the forenoon and two or three hours in the afternoon, they stand 

 over their flower beds soaking and soaking them, trying to save 

 their flowers. Some of the flowers died but many of them 

 lived. Yet if it had not been for the patience of those Western 

 women the flowers would have faded and the grass withered and 

 dried up. I do not care to take up the theological side of it 

 today. As I look at it, whatever God has created in this world, 

 at the outset he has made it a perfect work. I have no doubt 

 that the first man and the first woman that appeared in this 

 world were perfect specimens morally and physically. And so 

 with every plant and every leaf that we put under a glass we 

 see that its outline is perfect; and I do not believe, I cannot 

 believe, in this theory of evolution, that man came from an ape 

 or monkey, and the flowers and the fruit came up from the 

 crudest forms. I do not see it in that way, and I have no doubt, 

 as our friend has alluded to the fruit with which, according to 

 the Bible records. Eve tempted Adam, that it was very fair to 

 look upon. I accept that record as true. I hope in the con- 

 sideration of this question we shall fall back upon that which 



