Few men have made themselves better known in connection with agriculture and horticulture in America than Philip R. Freas, until the past two or three years Proprietor and Editor of the Germantown Telegraph, who has recently passed away in his seventy-eighth year. He was a brilliant example of successful triumph over adverse circumstances, and affords a striking illustration of what may be accomplished by those who dare to defy what seems to be an adverse fate.

A difficulty in hearing well deprived him in early life of the full enjoyment of those social pleasures so dear to the young - a deprivation the full appreciation of which can only be fully measured by those who have similarly suffered. But it led to those self-dependent habits which really proved the foundation of his success.

At about the period of his entry into manhood, he started his printing establishment, and his Telegraph, which, without a single week of intermission, he edited for over half a century. Yet, through a large part of this time, he met with domestic afflictions, and physical sufferings, enough to weaken the bravery of the stoutest heart. He had his bed-room attached to his editorial room, and from his bed of suffering overlooked and directed everything that was to appear in the columns of his paper. Few of his readers knew, while going over the genial good-tempered discussions directed by his editorial pen, how full of fortitude was the brave heart that never faltered in the struggle against the shadows; but insisted on sunshine and light for everybody else, though the dark pall was ever threatening to shut out the cheerfulness from his own career. The thousands whose lives his pen has brightened can never know of the sacrifices made in their behalf by this courageous and good man.

Outside of this personal obligation, agriculture and horticulture are deeply indebted to him. When he began the Telegraph with its admirable agricultural department, agricultural literature was in a very different state from now, when even city papers believe they can be scarcely successful without a "farmer's column" among the rest. He was admirably fitted for the editorship of such a department. Born and brought up on a farm at Barren Hill in Montgomery county, not a half dozen miles from where he lived and died, he knew just what the progressive farming needed, and he was just the man to lead in that line. He was very fond of calling his beautiful garden in Germantown, his Telegraph farm, and the little experiments which he conducted there - the more valuable for their limited extent, which induced thoroughness - than they really appeared to be.

He had many honors offered him, which his love for his editorial position led him to decline. The writer of this happened to be with him when a message from the President was received, tendering him the position of United States Commissioner of Agriculture.

The career of Mr. Freas illustrates another point not often as highly appreciated as it might be; namely, the advantage to a community of a live newspaper. Germantown has had a name and fame that it will never lose, because the Germantown Telegraph was successfully established there. For a quarter of a century there has been no legal Germantown. It is simply the Twenty-second Ward of the city of Philadelphia. But it is practically a city of itself yet - a city of 50,000 inhabitants - with four weekly newspapers, and an active, thriving business community; and all in the main made such through the energy and ability of the Germantown Telegraph.