STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 73 



the best and a plenty of what his soil will yield. As a class we are 

 quite apt to feed the pocket at the expense of the stomach, the 

 intellect, and the soul. Our farms offer too little that appeals to 

 the taste and to the fancy. It is not the hard labor of the farms 

 that drives our boys from home. They are ready to work harder in 

 the city. Until our surroundings, plenty, variety, comforts, and all 

 that tends to approximate the ideal and practical sum of rural hap- 

 piness outweighs the novelties, allurements, fascinations, tinsel and 

 glare of city life, this exodus will continue. 



In urging the claims and desiderata of small fruit culture upon 

 your attention, I feel that I am urging the taking of a step in the 

 right direction. 



An unprejudiced observer sees too many homesteads rich in ample 

 domain and half-filled fields, too many circumscribed desires for 

 beauty, too many tables bare of fruits and flowers, and has a sigh 

 of pity for the poverty that pays such goodly taxes. Our home- 

 steads all should be worthy- of our valleys, of our mountains, of our 

 people. We should center these things sweet to eye and ear, to 

 soul and sense. Things that shall draw and hold the affections of 

 both young and old, by tender ties which the}' shall never wish to 

 break. The Maine State Pomological Society is doing wisel}' and 

 well its appropriate work in hastening the advent of that perfect 

 day. From the progress of the past it may find abundant hope for 

 the present, and an earnest for the future. 



Next on the programme was, 



"WHAT MAX HATH DONE, MAN MAY DO." 

 By D. H. Knowlton. 

 For over fifty years my father spent his life on the old farm first 

 settled l\y ray grandfather. Here he erected buildings for a home. 

 They were model farm buildings, and into the old substantial farm- 

 house the sun darted his rays of light and shone unobstructed by 

 shade trees or shrub. When I was a small boy the old farm was sold 

 and a new home on the main street of our pleasant village was pur- 

 chased. In front of the house there were three large elms spreading 

 out their graceful branches, but my father wanted as many trees as 

 any one along the street and accordingly set out a tree in every avail- 

 able spot, so that in a few years there was a dense mass of foliage on 

 every hand, and vvhat little sunshine gained admission to the house 



