MEMORIAL OF HON. MARSHALL P. WILDER. 17 



John G. Barker said that whoever enjoyed Mr. Wilder's friend- 

 ship had a whole friend. For the last few months, since he had 

 been Superintendent of Forest Hills Cemetery, their relations had 

 been of the tenderest nature. He frequently visited the cemeterj', 

 and gave him most interesting reminiscences of those buried there, 

 and said it would not be long before the speaker would have to 

 care for him all the time ; and a short time ago, as the evening 

 shades were falling, he was laid away, leaving only pleasant re- 

 membrances. 



O. B. Had wen esteemed it a privilege to add a word to what had 

 been said. In one sense Mr. Wilder was the father of this Society ; 

 his handwriting is inscribed on these walls. But he was the leader 

 in establishing other societies, and as a member of the State Board 

 of Agriculture, a trustee of the Agricultural College, and in other 

 organizations, his record is unequalled in this generation, and will 

 go down to generations to come. 



Robert Manning said that it would be expected of one so long 

 and intimately associated with Mr. Wilder as he had been, to say 

 a few words. He recalled the time when he made the acquaint- 

 ance of Mr. Wilder. When a mere bo}' he was sent with his 

 brother, during the last illness of his father, with fruit for one of 

 the exhibitions of this Society, of which Mr. Wilder was then 

 President, and Ihe^' were introduced to him. But Mr. Wilder had 

 been a friend of his father's and his name had been a household 

 word since his earliest recollection. With the late Hon. Benjamin 

 V. French and Hon. Samuel Walker he seemed to form a trinity 

 of horticulturists who, more than an}' other men, represented the 

 Society in his mind before he became actively associated with 

 them ; and he was glad that one of them had been spared to us so 

 long. He had hoped that Mr. Wilder might live to the meeting of 

 his favorite society, the American Pomological Society, in this cit}'' 

 in September next, but it had been differently and, we could not 

 doubt, more wisely ordered. Mr. Wilder himself felt deeply the 

 uncertainty of his sta}' until that time, for in the address which he 

 prepared for the meeting at Grand Rapids, Mich., in September, 

 1885, after expressing his regret that he was unable to be there 

 personally, he said in words that now seem prophetic, "I console 

 myself with the hope that you will accept the invitation of the 

 Massachusetts Horticultural Society and come to Boston in 1887, 

 when I may be permitted to lay off the robes of office with which 

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