1884:.] TRANSACTIONS. 17 



management of our Officers, we were enabled to become the 

 owners of this land and building. Deducting necessary expenses, 

 our whole income is applied, in the language of our Charter, to 

 the " purpose of advancing the science, and encouraging and 

 improving the practice of Horticulture." Our position is, I 

 believe, unique. Alone, among kindred Societies, we make no 

 charge for admission to our Exhibitions ; throwing our doors 

 wide open, and inviting all to compete, observe, investigate, and 

 compare. Agricultural Societies, enjoying complete immunity 

 from taxation ; receiving a monetary bounty from the State ; 

 and sub-letting their property at will ; yet allow no person to 

 gaze upon flock, drove, cow, or counterpane, unless he first 

 purchases a ticket of leave. Even the Massachusetts Horticul- 

 tural Society is less liberal in the diffusion of its beneficent 

 influences than ourselves. You ought never to ask for special 

 and exclusive privileges. But, proffering advantages and 

 instruction to all, without money or price, you should never 

 submit supinely to partial and invidious discrimination against 

 yourselves. 



By the death of Clarendon Harris, which occurred on the 

 12th day of January ult., this Society was deprived of one of its 

 oldest and most valued Members. Few of this audience can 

 know the extent of our indebtedness to him, for assiduous service 

 upon our Committees and as a Trustee : fewer still, how much 

 we owe to his knowledge of Books and the Book-Trade, for the 

 secure foundation upon which our Library was built up. One of 

 my earliest memories is, of that old-fashioned book-store ; of the 

 curious Circulating Library, replete with pretty much every 

 thing that the mind of man had yielded to print, from the 

 Mysteries of Udolpho to Mavor's Voyages ; a quaint mixture of 

 the fanciful with the useful, — to which a somewhat omnivorous 

 appetite for reading was ever welcome so long as it enjoyed its 

 feast in quiet. Unassuming as was that modest old store, vivid 

 in my recollection with its occasional customer and the droning 

 sound of its primitive ruling-machine, — from it were graduated 

 Loring, Phillips, and Flagg, to give character and tone to the 

 Book-Trade of Boston : Well did it serve its day and generation ; 



never so well after his guiding hand and influence were withdrawn. 

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