G)mplimentary Banquet to Luther Burbank 



our friend Burbank has worked what, to our lay minds, ap- 

 pear almost like miracles. He has changed the characters 

 and appearances of fruits and flowers, turned pigmies into 

 giants, sweetened the bitter and the sour, transformed noxious 

 vi eeds into valuable plants, and verily set the seal of his 

 disapproval upon much that to him and us seems wrong in 

 Nature's handiwork. For us he has done much; and to 

 him the whole world is indebted. 



We sit here to-night to render tribute to his greatness. 

 Proud to call him "citizen of California," we marvel at the 

 skill with which he has worked his many miracles. And 

 we wonder why we did not know of him before. But genius 

 always struggles against a sea of adversity, and the really 

 great must prove their worth before it is accepted by the 

 world at large. No wonder then that California has been 

 slow to realize that living here within our midst a genius 

 capable of playing tricks with Nature has been cajoling 

 plums to mate with apricots, turning, better than a lawyer 

 can, the black to white, even disarming the desert cacti of 

 the spines, which wise old Nature, thinking to protect and 

 save them, had placed upon them. 



California has much to be proud of, much with which 

 to conjure. Our sun is more genial, our winters and sum- 

 mers more pleasant, our Yosemite deeper, our trees taller, 

 our women handsomer, our men braver, our acres more fer- 

 tile than those of any other country in the world. Yet I 

 doubt if California has been more widely heralded by any 

 one of these than it has been by the fame of him in whose 

 honor we are met here to-night. 



What will he do for us ? What has not one of his early 

 products done for all the world? The starving poor of Ire- 

 land have had ample cause to bless the genius that produced 



