16 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1883. 



You arc not challenged to inaitation, or rivalry, under our 

 American system of construction. The balloon-frame ; with its 

 super-structure of mansard, or pitched roof; does not invite the 

 extra load that M. Lockroy so fearlessly imposes. What may 

 be possible, in a remote future ; when the average Yankee shall 

 build for all time, and thereafter and because of it become his 

 own insurer ; is a pleasant speculation. That we could not build 

 much worse may be confidently assumed. That we shall im- 

 prove, rather than retrograde, may be boldly predicated by all 

 who reflect that climate is inexorable ; and that the hard and 

 slovenly discomfort of Anne's shiftless reign might as well be re- 

 vived, as the 



"quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles," 



of erection, or finish which, with the faintest semblance of 

 reason, are latterly charged to her example. 



The founders of this Society builded no wiser than they knew. 

 Thoroughly versed in the Horticultural Science of their own 

 times, they never doubted ; — sagacious and busy men of the world 

 as they were, and had always approved tliemselves ; that much 

 remained to be discovered beyond their immediate ken. They 

 rambled in the fields, which almost encroached upon Main Street ; 

 they roamed through the shaded walks in the garden of William 

 Lincoln, stretching, in its ample and complete extent, from the 

 Hermitage Brook almost to the present Kural Cemetery ; and 

 whatsoever they found by brook-side ; (for the Salisbury Pond 

 was not then even fancied as a possible want;) or in the ever 

 present grove ; they gathered, analyzed, and explained, without 

 money or price, to an abounding and continually larger audience. 

 And it was for such reasons: — because they fully recognized an 

 existing necessity ; because they saw that the Agricultural Soci- 

 ety had enough to demand and occupy its attention, unless it 

 elected to bite ofi" a larger end than it could chew ; and for the 

 additional reason, becoming stronger as Worcester should increase 

 in population and extend its habitations, that the farm and or- 

 chard must inevitably be pushed farther, and yet more remote^ 

 from the Town Hall ; that those clear-sighted, large-hearted and 

 public-spirited men — Anthony Chase, Clarendon Harris, Fred- 

 eric William Paine, William Lincoln, and Stephen Salisbury 



