Addresses of Welcome and Responses 
ADDRESS OF WELCOME ON BE HALF OF THE CITY OF WEST 
PALM BEACH 
W. A. Dutch, Mayor 
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : 
It is my good pleasure in behalf of the 
City to most heartily welcome the State 
Horticultural Association, as our most 
worthy guest, whom we delight to honor 
and have partake of our hospitality. 
I greet you in that spirit of freedom of 
the new day the glimmer of whose dawn 
is almost apparent. The gates and bar¬ 
riers between nations are fast being re¬ 
moved, and all hail the day when the song 
of freedom and welcome shall swell every 
breeze, and the kingdoms of the earth 
shall be free. 
In so greeting you, I am truly glad that 
we can depart from that rather ancient 
custom of giving you the keys of the City 
in order that you may unlock closed doors 
and gates that stand between you and 
some coveted pleasure or desire. Friends 
and guests, I have no key to the City to 
give you; there is none. 
We are glad to present to you a City 
wherein a united people are ever working 
to accomplish the greater and broader 
building thereof, breathing, in every ef¬ 
fort, the spirit of freedom and welcome, 
and it is to the credit of such efforts that 
makes it possible for me to invite you 
into the City without gates or walls, whose 
way is, and may it ever remain, open and 
free, to all who pass our way. 
Blessed the City that has rolled the 
stone from its portals, that all may enter 
with a feeling inspired by the warmth and 
cheerfulness of its social atmosphere. 
We bid you partake of our joys and 
pleasures, and share with us the great 
blessings this flower land, abounding in 
fruits, sweet to the taste, showers so gen¬ 
erously upon us. 
We greet you with a friendship 
likened unto the breathing rose, with 
sweets in every fold. We want you to 
feel and enjoy that freedom and welcome 
while here, which our very surroundings 
suggest, as immeasurable as the depths 
of our great ocean, as broad as our thous¬ 
ands of acres of rich, fertile land with the 
bird songs to gladden the heart and the 
orange-blossomed, sweet-scented zephyrs 
of the morning to enrapture our very be¬ 
ing, making us to feel that 
“God’s in his Heaven” 
“All’s right with the world.” 
Others will tell you of our great and 
wonderful resources, which make it possi¬ 
ble for the most successful cultivation and 
production of fruits, flowers and shrub¬ 
bery that you are especially more inter- 
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