20 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1893. 



What God hath joined together, shall the New England Agri- 

 cultural Society put asunder! 



" Why are these things thus ? " was the homely phrase in 

 which the foremost, because truest, American Humorist set forth 

 the puzzle that has taxed the wit of Humanity, aforetime. 

 What was the primal cause of anything, within our immediate 

 experience, that so far attracted attention as to provoke inquiry ! 

 And therefore, dismissing the Cosmic Egg, and the consequent 

 evolution, the insoluble problem being now, as ever, whence came 

 the very Egg ! We apply ourselves to the question, — 



^^ Si parva licet componere magnis,^^ 

 why was this Worcester County Horticctltdral Society ever 

 constituted ? I do not refer to the formal organization, A. D. 

 184-1, when Worcester, with its stagnating Canal and nascent 

 Railways, might be regarded as having taken permanent pre- 

 cedence in the County, otherwise than as its shire Town. But 

 how did it chance, or by what wise prescience was it arranged, that 

 just as the time was ripe the men were on hand to avail them- 

 selves of it! May not something be attributed, fairly, to politi- 

 cal causes, speaking in the broad sense of the term ; to the 

 fact that the sessions of the General Court were held in that 

 season of the year when Nature was putting forth all her efforts 

 to adorn the landscape; and man, if not blind as a bat, could 

 scarcely be insensible to what was going on around him! A 

 remark made by the then Governor of the Commonwealth,^ a few 

 years after a Constitutional Amendment had fixed the commence- 

 ment of the legislative year in January instead of May, wherein 

 he expressed a fear that his support of that change was the 

 o-reatest error of his political life, impressed itself upon my mem- 

 ory, indelibly. If you travelled to Boston, the stage-coach sup- 

 plied the only possible means of public conveyance. The journey 

 consumed a major portion of the day, so much indeed that little 

 opportunity was afforded, between suns, for business or pleasure. 

 None who had plodded over the turnpike, in heat and dust, were 

 anxious to repeat the tiresome journey until the necessity became 

 imperative. They remained in Boston ; attended the Legislative 



iThe late Gov. Levi Lincoln. 



