WELL IRIS FIELDS ♦ «/: ARLINVILLE, ILLINOIS 
WHERE IRIS BEAUTY ALMOST REACHES THE SKY » .» 
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This photograph was taken for you. The fields 
were planted for your happiness. Fifty thousand 
flower lovers came to see them in May. Sixteen 
states in one day. Four thousand automobiles 
came on the big day. Hardly a town within one 
hundred miles that didn’t send representatives. 
If you were there, this will remind you. If you 
were not there, it will help you to visualize 
twenty-five acres of solid rainbow beauty in 200 
different combinations of color. Millions of them. 
Beautiful beyond my poor words to describe. 
Alton, Illinois, and St. Louis, Missouri, send 
the most people. Springfield, Jacksonville, De¬ 
catur, Peoria and Bloomington are not far be¬ 
hind. I believe the loveliest people in the world, 
and the most sensible drivers I ever saw, come 
here. They seem to know that God’s great, beau¬ 
tiful, floral paradise was not laid out or conduct¬ 
ed for careless driving. They all enter heartily 
into the friendly spirit of the occasion and make 
us happy. 
Ten thousand letters come to me each year 
from people I have never seen. This one came 
yesterday— “My dear distant Friend: I am a poor 
old broken woman—hearing gone—vision nearly 
gone—buried my last and only soldier boy yes¬ 
terday and today I am planting white Irises upon 
his grave.—He loved them so.” The gas of 
France would not let her boy live and the divine 
love in her heart would not let him die. 
This mother in New York may be “old and 
broken” but I think she is beautiful. How I love 
to get their letters. How I love to have them 
come to see us in Iris time. How I would love 
to sit beside this sweet mother and talk to her 
about her fine boy and about his fine mother. 
Sometimes when I am reading these letters I 
wonder if my best friends are not those whom I 
have never seen. In Iris time there are veritable 
thousands whom I meet for the first time and the 
fragrance of their memory will never leave me. 
I never expect or want to be rich in money 
but I am a thousand times a millionaire in many 
things that all the money in the world could not 
buy. You help me to see the Divineness in my 
own work. You come and smile upon my acres 
of loveliness and they, in turn, grow more beau¬ 
tiful because of you. Can I ever make you un¬ 
derstand how your coming and your letters and 
your friendship give me courage to work and 
love to werkl 
I love the memory of Edward Bok because he 
went forth to make the world an atom better and 
more beautiful than he found it. That is what 
you are doing every time you plant a seed, shrub, 
or tree. Don’t stop— plant things. Love the finer 
things in life and it will add beauty to your soul 
and to your world. 
I am going into my Iris Fields and select twelve 
different varieties—red. and white, and blue, and 
pink, and lavender—twelve of what I call my finest. 
Then with my compliments I will add one fifty cent 
Shiwassee—large and red and tall and new,—the 
finest thing I have ever grown. You are not apt 
to find it elsewhere for I bought the entire stock 
of the originator, Dr. Birchfield of Ann Arbor, 
Michigan, and paid him $50.00 for ten plants. 
This little extra choice box I call my Memory 
Box and will send it to you, postpaid, for a dollar 
bill. Plant these beauties in a choice place to 
remind you of this beautiful Iris picture and in a 
short time you will have a start of the twelve 
finest things I grow. 
Sometimes there are 500 flower lovers in the 
paths and walks with note books and kodaks and 
open hearts, putting the touch of loveliness upon 
the acres and storing happiness in their own 
souls. That’s why they were planted for yon. 
Don’t destroy this little picture. Keep it and 
study it, and ask for a few for your friends and 
perhaps they, too, will see something in the 
beauty of the lilies that transcends many of the 
sordid things that creep into our lives. 
And when you come, please drive a little slow¬ 
er. 
WELL B. OTWELL, 
Carlinville, Illinois. 
P. S. If the Memory Box does not make you 
happy, give it to some one who hasn’t any Irises 
and I vdll give you back your dollar bill. 
