6th February, A. D. 1896. 



ESSAY 



BY 



Miss SARAH E. DOYLE, Providence, E. I. 



Thi'inc : — The Highest Mission of a HoiiicidtHral Society. 



Mk. President and Members of the Society. — This city is to be 

 congratulated for having a Horticultural Society whose members are 

 interested in the objects for which the Society is established, and will- 

 ing to devote time to the advancement of its interests. By its efforts 

 the wilderness and the solitary place may be made to blossom and 

 become sources of pleasure to the eye and health to the whole body. 

 Certainly one mission of such a society is accomplished, if the common 

 fruits by cultivation develop into the finest specimens of their species, 

 if new hues and charms are added to the flowers that have bloomed in 

 wild luxuriance by the wayside. 



Beautiful and delicate as the wild rose is, we do not feel like paying- 

 homage to it, as its cultivated and queenly relative, the "American 

 Beauty," almost incites us to do. Our mother Eve would not be 

 regarded as so weak, if the apple offered her had been the Rhode Island 

 Greening, which indeed might have been a temptation. That, however, 

 has never brought woe into the world. How could it ? The value of con- 

 stant effort directed to make every fruit, every vegetable, every flower, 

 as perfect as man can by study and work produce, should be recognized 

 and appreciated. It is one of the evidences of man's kingship over 

 the material things of the earth, for the skilled florist to be able to 

 have, as it were, a magic wand which he but waves over the common 

 and ordinary plants for them to change, so that they gladden and 

 delight by their exquisite beauty. 



Looking upon the exhibition of a horticultural society, where rare 



and graceful ferns rest the eye, where gorgeous chrysanthemums 



awaken admiration, where the queen of flowers — the rose — makes us 



linger in her presence, we ask whether the imagination of a Milton 



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