30 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1889. 



thorough prosecution and study of that comprehensive branch of 

 terrseculture ; yielding to bad counsel and under stress of mis- 

 management, also enters the lists and challenges a competition, 

 whose wrong intention is only surpassed by its absurdity. Yet, 

 for such rivalry in part, ill-judged and ungenerous, it draws from 

 the State treasury a bounty of six hundred dollars ! 



Smitten on both cheeks we have hitherto, in the phrase of the 

 prize-ring, come up smiling after our punishment. But has 

 patience or long-suffering, no limit? Or do we intend to pro- 

 portion our endurance to the power and will of others to shift 

 their proper load upon our over-burdened and galled shoulders ! 

 Grant that Issachar was an ass! What reason does that supply, 

 in this nineteenth century, for exempting from their share of the 

 common liability, the countless Kitchens of Theology, with their 

 holy pots and kettles ; or Thirty acres of House-Lots, that a half- 

 dozen gentlemen from Groton, Salem, or Quoddy may, without 

 cost, pose, impose, repose ! illustrating by example, the pregnant 

 gospel of " addition, division, silence." 



Despite invidious discrimination, we have hitherto, and to a 

 considerable degree, prospered. Our Society is no mendicant ; 

 and crawls under no table for mouldy crusts; nor yet for the 

 dogs to lick its sores ! It does insist, however, as it has the right 

 to do, that in the award of equal and exact justice under the 

 fundamental law its own case shall no longer be treated as an 

 exception. And if the opinion of the Society should accord with 

 the clear and fixed conviction of its Secretary, there will be no 

 halt, in our struggle for a recognition of our claim to equality 

 before the law, until the Supreme Judicial Court decides that the 

 honest, open ownership of real estate is less entitled to considera- 

 tion than a furtive investment in Federal bonds ; or that a Society 

 especially incorporated to "advance Science" is not a Scientific 

 Society ! 



All which is respectfully submitted, 



by 



EDWARD WINSLOW LINCOLN, 



Secretary. 

 Worcester^ Worcester County., Mass.^ 

 November 6, A. D. 1889. 



