A PERSONAL LETTER — TO YOU 
Dear Floral Friends, 
We receive so many letters from customers and friends during the intervals between 
catalogs, which I am unable to answer individually, that long ago we began to answer 
all in an introductory letter in our catalogs. A great many of our customers have 
expressed their appreciation of the letters and have approved the practice so that now 
if space does not permit a long letter, they tell me they have been disappointed. 
There is something about a garden that makes one think. Most gardeners become 
philosophers in their own small orbit and the more we live with plants and observe the 
phenomena of their lives, the more that orbit is enlarged to include finally all life, even 
human life and its problems of health, social progress, relations with our fellows, 
education, religion, everything that pertains to it. 
Gardens also develop our creative abilities even to the degree of talent and when 
one becomes creative he soon begins to use the talent not alone for self but for family 
and friends and many indeed strive and succeed in accomplishing something for their 
entire neighborhood. The whole world can become one’s neighbors. 
Don’t think that I am saying that such a course of events starts only in a garden. 
It may start in a telegraph office as it did for Edison. Luther Burbank’s started in a 
garden. Both have benefitted the entire human race. 
I believe my floral friends will never be surprised at the direction taken by my 
thoughts expressed in these letters because their own thoughts have often taken the same 
direction. I like to quote those ideas as they have been expressed by the great poets or 
philosophers. One of the best is in a little scrap book I have. It is the definition of an 
educated man. The original author was unknown to the writer who quoted it and I am 
unable to find its source. 
“The educated man keeps his mind open on every question until the evidence is 
all in. 
“He always listens to the man who knows. 
“He never laughs at new ideas. 
“He cross-examines his day dreams. 
“He knows the value of good habits and how to form them. 
“He knows when to think and when to call in the expert to think for him. 
“You can’t sell him magic. 
“He lives the forward-looking, outward-looking life. 
“He cultivates a love of the beautiful.” 
This reminds me of Thomas H. Huxley’s definition of 
A Liberal Education. 
That man, I think, has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth 
that his body is the ready servant of his will and does with care and pleasure all the 
work that as a mechanism it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear cold logic engine 
with all its parts of equal strength and in smooth working order ready like a steam 
engine to be turned to any kind of work and spin the gossamers as well as forge the 
anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with the great and fundamental truths of 
Nature and of the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life 
and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant 
of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of nature or of art, 
to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself. 
I have quoted this Huxley definition before but it is apropos here. 
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