STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 57 



Thus it is with the flowers that are strewn so plentifully along 

 our pathway. Some cast them aside as things of little worth, or 

 tread heedlessly upon them, crushing out their sweet life, without 

 one thought of what,they are or what they mean. To them, they 

 have no beauty, and the fragrance they send up as a welcome to 

 man passes by them and mingles with the upper air. 



Not so with the man of feeling, for he accepts them as smiles 

 sent forth from the Great Unknown, as mementoes of His undying 

 love. To him, they are valuable and lovely, for he remembers 

 the saying of the Greart Master, whose words were never meaning- 

 less or superfluous, " that even Solomon in all his glory was not 

 arrayed like one of these." And so his heart is pained at behold- 

 ing the insensibility of his fellows. They tread unrelentingly 

 upon the flowers he loves. Coming often, he gathers them with 

 greatest care, for they bring down through the ages the remem- 

 brances of the first Eden. They recall the image of many a flower 

 of beauty and loveliness, crushed in its clinging, confiding tender- 

 ness and love, by some ruthless hand. To him every bud and 

 blossom on' the wide earth, speaks of some corresponding human 

 feeling or passion. 



Their ofiSces, too, are as numberless as the ofiices of thought. 

 They tell us of hope, joy, peace, meekness, confidence and love, 

 and they speak of sorrow, weeping and bitterness as well. They 

 bloom for the early dead, and, catching the falling tear upon their 

 shining petals, they lighten up the churchyard, and trustingly, 

 confidingly point the mourner to the Eden of flowers above. They 

 deck the conqueror's brow, they adorn the festive hall, they 

 encircle the brow of beauty. Infinite in variety and form and 

 endless in colors and symmetry, they clothe with abundant pro- 

 fusion — alike the mountain and valley, the cottage and court, the 

 prison and palace. 



Now as a person of fine feelings and susceptibilities loves the 

 beautiful in nature, so will he love the beautiful wherever he finds 

 it. There is a life-like power in language, which when it clothes 

 those tender thoughts awakened by nature's scenery, often lends 

 vigor and light to the original picture and breathes over the whole 

 immortality of feeling. 



As I looked out through the frozen glass of the green-house, 

 while penning these lines, it seemed, indeed, an unpropitious 

 day to write an essay upon the subject of floriculture. The ther- 

 mometer down below zero, the fierce wintry blasts without and 



