Delivered at the opening of the Floral Festival, Library Hall,
Topeka, November 9th, 1886.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: In responding to the request of the Misses
Bristol, to formally open this beautiful festival, I am fully aware of
the fact that I have assumed a difficult _role_. My botanical education
was sadly neglected, and I had better confess, at once, that I know very
little about flowers. I delight in their beauty. I have always believed
that, where plants are blooming in gardens or windows, it is an
indication of a sweet and beautiful home life—of taste, of refinement,
of hopefulness and aspiration. I have visited several of the most noted
gardens in this country, and found rare pleasure in their treasures of
bud and blossom, of leaf and foliage. And yet, if I were asked, I could
tell the names of very few of the plants in any garden.
I am, however, glad to do whatsoever I can to promote the success of
this novel and beautiful festival of flowers, and especially to aid and
encourage the ladies who have arranged it. They have not only furnished
the people of the Capital City with a lovely exhibition, but have
answered, practically, a question often asked: “What is there for
woman’s hands to do?” Here is one occupation, at least, in which two
women have achieved a signal success; have supplied something a
community wants, and have done it well; have found something to do which
enlists at once their taste, their intelligence and their energies, and
in doing it have benefitted the city in which they live as well as
themselves.
I very gladly, therefore, comply with their request, that I should
formally open this festival. It is a beautiful display of
flowers—creditable alike to the ladies whose skill and taste and
enterprise devised and arranged it, and to the city in which it is held.
And now, speaking for them, I bid you one and all welcome, and declare
the flower show formally opened.