Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting: Washington, D. C. September 8 and 9, 1916.
Science
Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting: Washington, D. C. September 8 and 9, 1916.
Northern Nut Growers Association -- Periodicals; Nut trees -- Periodicals; Nuts -- Periodicals
THE PRESIDENT: I want to take the liberty of using thirty seconds in
this period of exhortation and confession to come in on the same strain.
After all, what is life for? How many of us want the thing that is dead
easy, and how many of us want the job with nothing to do? We all, in a
certain lazy mood, say we want something easy and want to rest, but if
there is anything on earth that a man shuns above all else it is that
little room with absolutely nothing to do, namely, a cell. When they
want to break a man they don't put him at hard labor on the stone pile;
they put him in a little room with nothing to do. The youngster who
plays doesn't want a dead easy game. He builds a house, and, when he has
done with it, bang, he doesn't want the house he wanted to build. And I
must confess that if it were perfectly plain sailing and you could plant
out all these nut trees and have them grow like fury, it would not be
much fun. It is a fact that men like to achieve and experiment; men
like effort. Suppose everybody in this country retired and could put up
his feet and do nothing, there wouldn't be a name in the paper the next
morning. Mr. Hughes, President Wilson, Mr. Taft, Mr. Brandies, and all
of the great men who are doing things in this world would all be gone
fanning themselves quietly. This world is run by men who don't have to
work; they work for fun. So I wish to submit that the tree--if a man
happens to be built to love plants that grow--that the tree is one of
the great avenues of fun.
MR. WEBER: Mr. President, along the same line of thought, I wish to
express my views with what Colonel Van Duzee has had to say. If we were
to attend a convention of surgeons and hear different diseases and
ailments of the body discussed, we would probably all be disposed to
think that we were standing on the tip-end of the diving board into
eternity beyond. But people keep on living just the same,
notwithstanding the knocking of the doctors, and the diseases to which
we are subject, and trees will keep on growing just the same,
notwithstanding their diseases and various other troubles, and so I
think no one should be discouraged.
THE SECRETARY: I just want to add my little encouragement. In spite of
all the failure that I have had, and they have been many, in spite of
the reports of failures of others and the pessimism of others, I have
the same abiding faith in the future of nut growing, and just the same
enthusiasm for it that I had in the beginning, if not greater.
(Applause.)
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