Each individual of the race leaves some trace of his existence on the generation in which he lives, and considerable numbers transmit their names to posterity italicised in good deeds or embalmed in noble and elevating thought.
The desire to be remembered and esteemed by those who come after us, seems to be, with the better and more exalted minds, a greater inspiration to high intellectual effort than the mere plaudits of cotemporaries. As on the stage, those actors who play best their parts are recalled and applauded after the curtain has fallen, so those in the brief drama of life, who have best performed their duties are, after their mortal costumes have been forever laid away in restful graves, again called out by their admiring cotemporaries, and thus their intellectual and moral personalities reappear before the lights, amidst tumultuous and emulative applause.
It is the duty and pleasure of your committee, gentlemen of the Mississippi Valley Horticultural Society, in harmony with this line of reflection, to bring before you the character and services of the recently deceased Dr. John A. Warder, of Ohio. His naturally strong mental faculties were led out and trained, in school and college, to a full and vigorous stature. His chosen profession of medicine, in the earlier years of his manhood, occupied his entire thought and stimulated him to untiring labor of mind and body, and, at the same time, gave him also that culture of the heart which, through his refined, emotional nature, was ever incarnating itself in delicate acts of kindness and generosity toward those who needed sympathy or friends.
But he turned at last from his professional studies—from the books in his library—to those broader investigations of the mysteries of life and growth of flowers, fruits and forests, to which the fields, orchards, and wild woods of Ohio ever allured him. His childhood and youth had passed amidst the rustic scenes of a home in the country, on a farm; and as the seashell, though ever so long and far away from its home in the surf, will, when placed to the ear always moan of its ocean home, so his great and tender soul ever yearned for a life among the flora and sylvia of youth. His brave and benignant spirit explored all avenues of knowledge which led into flowering fields and orchards. To his eye every blossom was a poem; to his quick perception every tree a book full of useful and agreeable teachings. And to the study of these volumes—these continued annuals—fresh in new binding, embellishment, and gilding every summer and autumn, Dr. Warder devoted the choicest years of his mature manhood.
It is the enthusiast of a cause who gives vitality and propulsive power. Dr. Warder was an enthusiast in horticulture and in forestry. To advance the race in those two vocations no labor was too great for him to undertake, no sacrifice too severe for him joyfully to make. At his own expense he went into fresh territories and States, preaching, as a missionary of a new gospel, the importance and necessity of orcharding and tree planting. His thoughts were strewn, like precious seeds, among the dwellers on the prairies of Nebraska, Dakota, Wyoming, Minnesota and the Northwest. And they took root, so that the concepts of thousands of groves and orchards, which now stand as living monuments to his useful life, came from his own philanthropic brain. In his mind miniature forests grew on every prairie, and golden fruit flashed in the autumn sunlight of every hill-side. He knew no limit to his love of horticulture and arboriculture. He was earnest; he was active, sincere, and his vitægraph is written wherever flowers bloom, fruits ripen, and forests wave all over the country he loved so well and served so modestly, efficiently, and faithfully.
His example is worthy of the emulation of our sons and of their sons. And standing at his grave it is meet and proper for this society to recall his noble services to its cause, to wish that, with each recurring year his memory may, like the flowers and foliage he studied so well, be clothed in new verdure and its fragrance perpetuated as a grateful perfume.
Resolved—That the Mississippi Valley Horticultural Society deplores the death of its friend and active member, Dr. John A. Warder of Ohio; that our sincere condolence is extended to his family, and that we recommend to kindred societies throughout the Northwest the planting of memorial trees and groves to commemorate his labors, his achievements, and his philanthropy as a skilled orchardist and forester.
Selection of a Site for a Park.
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