1/8 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



John W. Ceark, North Hadley, Mass. 



I come from Massachusetts, and I bring you their welcome,, 

 and also congratulate you for them upon the bountiful crop of 

 fruit you have this year. Providence has smiled on you more 

 than it has on us. The winter was very severe with us — it has 

 been the last three or four winters although we are further south 

 than you, and our fruit shows more or less injury. But I hope 

 that next year we can welcome some one from your Society, 

 or some ones, the more the better, to our Society meeting, and 

 you can congratulate us on what Providence has done for us — 

 not that we wish you to have any less fruit but we would like 

 to have the conditions the same as this year when other people 

 haven't much and you have a great deal and prices are good; 

 because that is a very important item in the last wind up, that 

 prices are good and that we get something for our work. 



And I also want to thank your mayor for his generosity to us 

 in making this afternoon pleasant to us in giving us the trip to 

 Togus. I know I speak for myself, aijd I think for all the partjf 

 that took advantage of his generous offer. 



I am glad for you that you have such a broad outlook, that 

 nature has done so much for you throughout your State, and 

 though I don't belong here, still I have had the privilege of 

 seeing considerable of your State, as I think this is the sixth 

 or seventh time that I have been down here, and I have been 

 over your State not quite from one end to the other, and still 

 in quite a number of places and I have noticed that you can 

 produce good fruit ; but don't think that you are doing anything" 

 to what can be done. Although some don't like to hear me say 

 it, I simply say we don't grow any fruit yet. The ground hasn't 

 been broken. We don't get anything the results that we should. 

 The possibilities, the half has never been told. It is here in 

 your soil. Your fruits as they stand in the market have a name 

 that very few states can claim. Your fruits are solid in texture^ 

 bright in color, and have the name of keeping equal if not supe- 

 rior to any. But there is one thing that I will say here — in the 

 markets they are a little under size. Now that simply says that 

 you want to grow them a little better, and if you will you will 

 find it will pay you big interest on the money that you put in. 

 I know one time — I can't tell you just when — I was at an insti- 



