12 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1891. 



from admission-fees ! Certainly if jags were only to be sur- 

 mounted by a devotion like that of Curtius ; and progress 

 attained but by a whole-souled surrender of private interest for 

 common benefit ; it may be regarded as not the least of our good 

 fortunes that the carcass was not sufficient to attract the vultures, 

 if any such there were among the men who voted — January 1, 

 A. D. 1851, to cite the exact phrase of the record : 



"That in consequence of the heavy expenditures to be in- 

 curred by building, no premiums shall be awarded the present 

 year." 



Happily in the crisis of our fortunes, a legacy of Three 

 Thousand Dollars (|3,000.00) was bequeathed to the Society 

 by Hon. Daniel Waldo, which fell in at the very nick of time 

 when it could determine our future fate and aims. Thereafter, 

 if discouragement had been felt, at any symptoms of public 

 indifference or listlessness, no outward manifestation of it was 

 allowed to become evident. 



At the Annual Meeting of the Society, May 10, A. D. 1848, 

 it was voted: to choose a Committee to confer with the Trustees 

 of the Worcester Agricultural Society, and with such other 

 associations as may be willing to co-operate, to ascertain if 

 some plan cannot be devised for the erection of a building suit- 

 able for holding the Exhibitions of the respective Societies. 

 Frederic Wni. Paine, Samuel H. Colton, and Edward W. 

 Lincoln, were chosen: but the Committee seems to have made 

 no report. Possibly no action was ever taken ; the set con- 

 servatism of his colleagues quenching the ardor of the junior 

 member. In view of what soon after occurred, who shall say 

 that inertia was not then the wiser policy? But there was 

 continual annoyance from the necessity of hiring Halls ; and 

 their proved unsuitableness in many respects ; so that, at the 

 Annual Meeting, January 2d, A. D. 1850, the Society 



Voted: that the Board of Trustees should "take into con- 

 sideration the question of investing the whole, or part, of the 

 funds of the Society, in Real Estate, with instructions to report 

 thereon at a future meeting of the Society." 



