8 o 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN. 
nursevmen’s kicks. 
Mon. N. H. Albaugh, president of the Albaugh Nursery 
Company, of Tadmor, O., enlivened the proceedings with a 
speech on “Nurserymen’s Kicks,” an ab.stract of which 
follows : 
“ When Saul of Tarsus made that famous journey from 
Jerusalem to Damascus, and experienced that wonderful 
.spiritual sunstroke that blinded his natural orbs but opened 
his spiritual vision, he perceived a great light, and a voice 
spoke unto him saying that ‘ it was hard to kick against 
the goads.’ The voice not only told the truth, but also 
branded Saul as the ‘ boss kicker ’ of his day, and since his 
time there have been kickers all down the line to the present 
moment. The preacher kicks if his orthodoxy is some 
other preacher’s heterodoxy. The physician of allopathic 
predilections kicks at the little pellets of the homeopathy 
The lawyer kicks if the judge or jury leans toward justice, 
if justice re.sts with the other fellow. The politician kicks 
when the largest crowds rush to greet his opponent. United 
States senators kick when they fail to get their ‘ sugar,’ 
and even men have been known to kick while being hung. 
“ So the world is full of kickers, in every phase and 
sphere of life ; but of all the kickers, little or big, short or 
tall, good or bad, the nursery kicker ‘ takes the cake.’ Not 
only has every nursery centre its ideal standard of tree, 
plant, or vine, but almost every nurseryman has a like 
standard himself, and these standards differ almost as 
widely as the day differs from the night. For 
instance, in New York the model nursery-grown peach 
tree must be ‘ short and stubby,’ while in the Mississippi 
valley they must be ‘ tall as bean poles.’ So, when 
one nurseryman, of one section, ships a car load of 
trees to a nurseryman of another section, it gives a magnifi¬ 
cent opportunity for the chronic nursery kicker to get in his 
work. His most common language, in his stereotyped love 
letter to the shipper, is, ‘ Trees not first-class, in fact worth¬ 
less. Can’t use them. Here subject to your order.’ And 
then he often slyly slips them upon the grounds to his best 
dealer, who packs them out with great satisfaction, and to 
the low musical chuckle of the kicker, while the shipper 
five hundred miles away, receiving his love missive, knows 
that his name is ‘ Dennis ’ for ever receiving a cent from 
the kicker, turns his face to the wall with a calm resimiation 
o 
and sings a few verses of the hymn beginning, 
‘ Blest be the tie that binds.’ 
“ The opportunities of the nursery kicker are great. His 
consignor is hundreds of miles away, bu.sy on his own 
grounds ; time flying on in an electric circle, no day to 
spare to investigate at the far away consignee’s packing 
shed, so the poor consignor ‘ mutters a prayer or two,’ and 
then goes on with the weary grind. 
“There are crimes that stand nearly on a level with mur¬ 
der and rapine. There are sinners that equal Cain, and of 
these the chronic nursery kicker is ‘ chief among ten thou¬ 
sand,” and the most hardened sinner of them all. But you 
ask, shall the nurseryman never kick. I will answer in the 
classic language of ‘Pinafore,’ ' kardly ever' A mild in¬ 
quiry and request, couched in gentlemanly language, for a 
correction of errors, can not be classed as a kick, nor its 
author a ‘ kicker.’ If I were asked by a young and rising 
nurseryman if under somewhat discouraging consignments 
he should enter a vigorous kick, in the language of the 
elder Weller, when asked by his young friend his advice on 
entering the state of matrimony, I should answer as he did 
with one word, ‘ dont.’ 
A groceryman may kick on his consignment from the 
wholesale house of sugar, coffee, tea, and all the innumer¬ 
able articles in his line, have the same returned to him, and 
neither party suffers much loss, except freight and time. 
The dry goods merchant is in the same categoiy, and so 
hundreds of handlers of non-perishable goods, but not so 
the nurseryman. In legal parlance, with him, time , and 
distance ‘ are the essence of the contract.’ Better a thou¬ 
sand times suffer a little inconvenience in silence and try 
some other consignor next season than be marked ‘ kicks 
for a reduction.’ 
“ Two divines were disputing as to the relative merits 
of their religious beliefs and associations, one contending 
that his belief would lead him in the future world in the 
company of such eminent and learned men as Goethe, 
Schiller, Victor Hugo, Washington, and Lincoln, whose 
companionship would certainly be very desirable through all 
eternity. ‘ Yes, that is true,’ replied his adversary. ‘ I 
admit that such companionship would be elegant, but I think 
you would find the climate objectionable ! ’ So with even 
the gray and silvery hair of my friend Willard before me, 
ripening for that country ‘ where all good tree men go,’ I 
would say, don’t run the risk of emigrating to any such 
objectionable climate by being classed as a chronic nursery 
kicker.” 
nurserymen’s novelties. 
E. Morden, of Niagara, Out., read a paper on “ Nursery¬ 
men’s Novelties.” He said : “ I think it would have been 
better if we had known fewer novelties in the past. It is 
unfair to so arrange our enterprise that our customers have 
all the losses and we all the profits. All good fruits have 
once been novelties. But where one prize has been drawn 
the long suffering public has found hundreds of blanks. 
To sell unworthy novelties is especially wrong in the nur¬ 
sery trade, because there is not only the first outlay for 
them, but they encumber the ground for perhaps years, 
and only give a crop of disappointment and dissatisfaction. 
Only a small percentage of all novelties are worthy of gen¬ 
eral cultivation. The really valuable fruits are few. Here 
in this section (Southern Canada) we can grow the finest 
fruits. Why should we hanker after iron-clad novelties? 
Novelties of value are very scarce. When nurserymen 
offer .novelties by the score, they make childish pretensions 
