74 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1892. 



ing to him at the start was added the rich experience gained in a 

 long and extensive practice there was no man in this vicinity that 

 could cope with him in the treatment of disease or the perform- 

 ance of operations in surgery. He had few peers in the Com- 

 monwealth or in New England. 



I was present, Mr. President, at the supper of our Society 

 twenty years or so ago. I remember, sir, on that occasion, 

 regretting that Dr. Green, who had died a few years before, 

 could not be present to see how prosperous the institution had 

 become which he had helped to found and to congratulate the 

 Society upon getting out of debt. Even more earnestly do I 

 wish to-night that he were here to note the added prosperity 

 which has come to our Society during the last twenty years and 

 to congratulate us upon having just judiciously increased the 

 debt of the Society. I wish also that Dr. Green could walk 

 along Elm Street this evening and see how great the Public Li- 

 brary of which he was the principal founder has grown to be, 

 and that he could know that it has become necessary to put up 

 the beautiful building which has recently been erected there to 

 house the books he gave to the City and which are being bought 

 with the income of the ever-increasing fund which he left by will, 

 and to accommodate inquirers wishing to make use of those 

 books. 



Mr. President, one more word and I will sit down. I have 

 been wishing for thirty years to make an address to the 

 Horticultural Society, and this is my first chance to do so. 



It is more than thirty years since upon entering the Divinity 

 School of Harvard College I was set to translating portions of 

 the Book of Genesis from the original Hebrew, and made a 

 discovery which I have desired ever since to announce to the 

 members of this Society. 



It was in reading the story of what is usually regarded as an 

 account of the fall of mankind, but which seems to me to 

 represent its rise from a condition of ignorance and innocence 

 into one of knowledge of good and evil, in which state alone 

 virtue is possible, that I unearthed the secret which I am now to 

 reveal. 



I had been taught that in the story referred to, it was narrated 



