The Tales of a Traveler
Open at a time when the florist business was just beginning to be recognized as a factor in the industrial development of the land. The story commences with the year 1888, and those florists who were cognizant of the general status of affairs at that time will best appreciate the wonderful changes which have occurred in the nearly thirty years which have passed away since then.
Mr. Skidelsky's narrative is a record of men and times, a running story of biography, skilfully unrolled. He has traveled the country very thoroughly; met with men of all kinds and nationalities, and has been so keenly observant through all of the years that to us older men particularly his writings and character descriptions ring wonderfully true and bring back many recollections.
The younger men should take a keen interest in The Tales, for we doubt whether at any time in the future there will be available so clear and unvarnished a statement of the period 1888 to 1916 as this one from the pen of Mr. Skidelsky.
The author well describes conditions existing in commercial floriculture in the United States during the years under review. The wages and traveling costs of that time are noted, and the hard work of the beginner on the road is told with candor. The young "ambassador of com-