The beautiful spring scarcely lifts winter's white mantle from the earth ere Flora begins to beautify nature's green carpet with the snowdrop, crocus, violet and buttercup, increasing in magnificence with the more stately flowers until the queen of her realm, the stately rose, fills the air with rich perfume, makes home beautiful and the inmates happy. Not a soul in this wide world but is made better and happier by a plant in the window, a plat of flowers in the yard, or even a morning glory climbing over the rustic porch. A single flower gladdens the child, a bouquet awakens sweet thoughts in everyone, a few potted flowers makes the sick room cheerful. We place a bouquet on the still bosom, cover the coffin with wreathes and crosses of flowers, decorate the graves and ornament the last resting place of our lost loved ones with flowers, plants, shrubs and evergreens, sacred to their memory. Yearly the beautiful place of horticulture awakens fond memories as we place a wreath of immortelles over the dust of our loved, but not forgotten dead.

The ornamental phase is ever before us in efforts to beautify and adorn the yard, lawn, private and public parks.

The taste of an artist and the skill of an engineer are required to lay out and ornament the meandering footpath, the winding walk and stately driveway.

To adorn the babbling brook, silver lake and sparkling fountain, sylvan grove and cool grotto calls for the finest taste and skill of the horticultural artist, where the laborer may find a place of sweet rest, the rich enjoy their drive, the family a pleasant "outing," and the lover lay the wreathe of his heart at his idol's feet.

Returning again from elysian fields of recreation, beauty and romance to the stern realities of horticulture, the rugged phase of toil, weary toil, continually forces itself into view. With firm will, strong muscle and clear head we must cultivate, prune, train, gather and market the products, pocket the proceeds and rest on increased bank account, if perchance the labor has not cost more than its proceeds.

Yet there is remuneration more precious than increased bank account, as suggested by one member of this society whose fidelity to God and man is unquestioned. As he wends his way to market in the "wee small hours” of the night, beneath the twinkling stars, before the morning sun gilds the heavens and all nature is at rest, he says: "His soul seemed suspended in stillness and nearer to his Heavenly Father than at any other time." Conscious of his uprightness and the excellency of his products and acknowledging them as the gift of our beneficent Creator. How sweet must the communion and fellowship be, as the heart wells in praise and thanksgiving to the giver of all good! How precious the reward even though the bank account is not enlarged!

PROFIT.-Profit is the most enchanting and enticing, yet often most deceptive, and when compared with other lines in the broad field, agriculture certainly presents the more pleasing and delightful aspect.

No field in the domain of agriculture can compare (acre for acre) in profit with fruits, flowers and vegetables.

Comparisons are said to be odious. One or two will suffice. Farmers do well when corn yields $12 and wheat $20 per acre. Our most prominent fruit growers report from $100 to $300 as gross proceeds per acre of apples, peaches, pears and other large fruits. The lowest I know of is $50. Small fruits yield as high as $400 and even more. Under my

immediate observation is a 40-acre corn field and 1 1-16 of an acre of strawberries.

The corn field has brought $450 and the stalks for pasturage are worth $20. The gross yield of the 1 1-16 of an acre of strawberries has been $450 for the same two years.

One bed of 13-16 of an acre gave $465 gross over family use.

The average net on the corn, after paying rent and labor, was about $5, while the strawberries, after paying for rent, labor, crates and all expenses, netted about $200 per acre. Surely profit presents a smiling phase.

There is another phase, connected with utilizing (?) the surplus and unmarketable fruits for the increase of profit and enlarging the bank account, that "sows tares" which yield a large crop of vice, crime, misery and death-the wine press and distillery.

It is known that 80 per cent of crime in our country is traceable directly and indirectly to the use of intoxicants. We may reasonably ask if the members of society standing on a pre-eminently high plane of morality, virtue, purity, peace and good citizenship should engage in a business for the sake of profit that must sooner or later bring them into disesteem, distress to fellow creatures, and aid to fill jails and penitentiaries. I was born in the shadow of a stillhouse, raised behind a counter where drinks were retailed at 6 cents a glass, and have sold intoxicants myself, and know that from the "worm of the still" flows a stream of sin, crime, woe, misery, degradation and death.

ENTOMOLOGICAL.-There is a phase beautiful, interesting and delightful to the entomologist, that is dreaded and detested by all other fruitgrowers.

There may be seen crawling, hopping and jumping all over it all kinds of insects, bugs, beetles, worms, curculios, gougers, flies, scale, snapping turtles, etc., of every description, color, shape and size-beautiful and hideous-delighting our worthy entomologist with their beautiful colors, wonderful forms, rapid development, singular transformations, astonishing increase and powerful destroying capacity.

The aphis, borer, canker worm, codling moth, tent caterpillar, gouger, rose slug, flea beetle, spider, fringed wing apple twig borer and a thousand other species to work on root, bark, wood, foliage, flower and fruit. Between these and the horticulturist there is a battle unto death— death to them or his profits..

The entomologist has such beautiful scientific names for all of them that one would think they wouldn't harm the tiniest leaf, flower or fruit in all the world.

No

THE COMMERCIAL PHASE.-Men are dependent on each other. one country produces all the necessaries, comforts or luxuries of life. International commerce is a necessity. Governments should encourage and facilitate exchange of commodities, adopting "free trade and sailors' rights" as far as consistent with health and prosperity.

Quite recently a hideous spectre arose before the fruit growers of America. A little man with a large conceit, his grandfather's hat and Achilles' sword decided that our fruit was dangerous to the interests of his subjects on the Rhine and decreed that they should eat no more American apples, and thereby knocked the bottoms out of 16,000 or 20,000 barrels, and sent $100,000 to the bottom of the sea.

It seems strange to a boy up an apple tree which his grandfather imported from Germany, that all at once the discovery is made in the "black forest" that apples the American boy grows fat on should be so dangerous to the health of his fourth cousin in "Faderland."

Perhaps removal of the beet sugar differential would restore our apples to health.

Brother Holsinger ought to use influence with his big cousin to get him to sheath his sword and rescind the edict so his kinsmen in Berlin could get some choice fruit from the "land of the big red apple” to give their children Sunday evenings after a carousal in the beer garden and wine cellar.

INTELLECTUAL.-We need only compare the clumsy and defective ways of the careless and uninformed with the skillful methods of the cultured and intelligent to discover the necessity and advantage of a well cultivated intellect, and a mind stored with information on its varied branches, to see the intellectual phase of horticulture. Whatever may be said of other occupations, no one can succeed in this unless his intellectual storeroom is as highly cultivated as his potato patch.

The moral phase may not be so clearly seen as felt.

Constantly associated with the useful and beautiful, we survey the wonders of creation, meditate upon the perfect adaptation of everything to the needs of animated nature and to the comfort, pleasure and happiness

of intelligent beings, and wonder if it is all by chance or by design. If by design we look for the architect. And we are forced to admit that wisdom, goodness and love, far superior to the combined wisdom of the entire human race from Adam to this hour, drew the design, and we must look beyond man for power and skill to execute the wondrous plan.

When we meditate upon the goodness, perfection and majesty of so lofty a mind, we aspire to higher, purer and nobler life. When in "the dewy sweetness and reverential stillness of early dawn," or twilight's calm reflective moments; when flowers brighten the lonely places and the forests bless the earth with refreshing shade, as the trees stretch their heads yearningly heavenward, while their branches wave praises to the Divine, our thoughts are lifted to God, the great architect of the universe, and lessons of eternal truths are impressed on our minds. When we watch the growing plant, behold the harmonious and delicate shading of colors in flowers and inhale their sweet perfume; when we think of the innumerable kinds and variteies of fruits, with their limitless flavors, our thoughts are purified, our moral sensibilities refined, we are lifted to a higher plane and instinctively desire and aspire to associate with the pure, good and holy.

As we gather the delicate strawberry just below the line of eternal snow on Alpine heights, or pluck wild fruits from the mountain side, or wander by "cool Siloam's shady rill," where luscious pawpaws grow, or on the fertile plain gather the more substantial fruits that strengthen the body, invigorate the mind and sustain the nervous system, or in warmer climes, where cooling fruits of the tropics refresh the panting heart, our thoughts rise heavenward and our hearts break forth in the grand old hymn, "Praise God from whom all blessings flow," bringing us face to face with the spiritual phase of our divinely appointed occupation.

THE SPIRITUAL.-As we watch the seed germinate and the plant grow, bud, bloom, fruit and die; as we see the flower open, fade and fall away, the grass wither and decay, the leaves of the forest fall to enrich Mother Earth, while winter winds, through leafless boughs, sigh a solemn requiem over dead, decaying Nature, until vernal suns warm Earth's winding sheet, awake the joyous songs of maiden, bird and bee, arouse the sleeping and dead vegetable kingdom to new life, clothing the world in beautiful garments, we are taught the glorious doctrine of "life, death, life again," forcing the spiritual lessons of horticulture on our minds. Shall God so reclothe the earth with new life and beauty and not rehabilitate you?

In the beginning man was made a little lower than the angels, in the image and likeness of his Creator, and endowed with mind, soul and spirit a mind to acquire knowledge, discriminate between truth and error, and to reason from cause to effect and from effect to cause; a soul to be moved by the emotions of fear, joy, sorrow, sympathy and love, and a spirit that desires and aspires to a higher, purer and nobler existence, and hopes that beyond there is a state where man shall never, never, never, die.

With his wonderful mental and intellectual endowments he has measured the distance to the sun, calculated the revolutions of the planets and determined their time and seasons; named the constellations, numbered the principal stars and foretold the return of comets. He has ascended high in the heavens and watched earth's beautiful panorama roll beneath his feet. He has descended into the ocean and brought forth the wonders of the deep. He has made the elements subservient to his will and administer to his comfort, pleasure and happiness. He has drawn the most powerful force of Nature from the clouds and made it warm his home, light his mansion and illuminate his pathway. He has chained it to his chariot wheels and made it transport himself and products, and by it communicates his thoughts to all parts of the world and talks to his friend in the uttermost parts of the earth. He has bottled up the eloquence of statesmen, the oratory of patriots and the sighs of distress; sealed up the inspiring strains of martial music, the thundering tones and soft cadences. and sweet harmony of the oratorio as pealed forth from the great organ by musical celebrities, with the enthusiastic applause of delighted multitudes, to be repeated before unborn generations.

Time will not allow me to refer to his microscopic discoveries in the dark recesses of the unseen, nor of his powers by which he has analyzed the rays of light aad determined the component parts of the great luminary of day.

Can it be possible that death shall extinguish the vital spark and annihilate a being possessed of such God-like powers? Nay, verily! The annual revivification of nature, clothing the earth in a robe of beauty and the forest in a mantle of gaiety, is teaching us the glorious spiritual truth that "though a man die, yet shall he live again." Selah!

Every phase of horticulture teaches "that whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap." True in the natural world, and by analogy we believe it true in the higher domain of the spiritual.

"He that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption, but he that soweth to the spirit shall of the spirit reap life-life everlasting." What are you sowing?

DAN CARPENTER, Barry, Mo.

Mr. A. J. Nelson sang and was heartily encored.