“A seedsman’s list, a nurseryman’s catalogue, are more fascinating to us than any story. In this way, through several years, we gradually accumulated materials and became familiar with facts and principles, which paved the way for our editorial labors. Lindley’s ‘Horticulture’ and Gray’s ‘Structural Botany’ came in as constant companions. And when, at length, through a friend’s liberality, we became the recipients of the London _Gardener’s Chronicle_, edited by Prof. Lindley, our treasures were inestimable. Many hundred times have we lain awake for hours unable to throw off the excitement of preaching, and beguiling the time with imaginary visits to the Chiswick Garden, to the more than oriental magnificence of the Duke of Devonshire’s grounds at Chatsworth. We have had long discussions in that little bed-room at Indianapolis, with Van Mons about pears, with Vibert about roses, with Thompson and Knight of fruits and theories of vegetable life, and with Loudon about everything under the heavens in the horticultural world. “This employment of waste hours not only answered a purpose of soothing excited nerves then, but brought us into such relations to the material world that we speak with entire moderation when we say that all the estates of the richest duke in England could not have given us half the pleasure which we have derived from pastures, waysides, and unoccupied prairies.” He was an earnest advocate of manual labor. He had no patience with those whose squeamish effeminacy made them look upon labor as degrading. On the fly-leaves of his “Editorial Agricultural Book,” begun January 10, 1845, he wrote: “It is my deliberate conviction that _physical_ labor is indispensable to intellectual and moral health, that the industrial and producing interests of society are powerfully conservative of morals. Especially do I regard the tillage of the soil as conducive to life, health, morals, and manhood. I sympathize with the advance of society through practical physical labors more than I do through metaphysical speculations. I obtain clearer views of religious truth through my sympathies with _men_ and their _life_ than I do through _books and their thoughts_. Nor do I think any theology will be sound which is made in the _closet_. It should be made in the street, shop, ship, office, and on the farm. I have followed both inclination and conviction in allying myself to the laboring classes.” His knowledge on the subject of farming was not altogether theoretic. One of his old parishioners writes us: “He loved to work and toil, especially in his own garden. He always had the earliest vegetables in the market, and his garden was better than any other in the city. He loved to work among his flowers, and could call every flower by its name readily. I think that he loved his flowers and took more pleasure with them than anything else, excepting his family. He certainly was more devoted to his family than any man I ever saw.”