BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



23 



" Probably you are quite right, Mr. L , from a profes- 

 sional point of view," replied Mr. Shaw, with his usual 

 smile, " but I am indebted to Mr. DeBar for a great many 

 very pleasant hours, and am glad of the opportunity to 

 partially repay that debt." It is to his recognition of a 

 much higher order of dramatic ability that we owe the Neil- 

 son mulberry tree in the rear of the Shakspeare statue ; 

 marking the spot which " the incomparable Juliet " selected 

 on her last visit to St. Louis for the shp from the poet's 

 own mulberry at Stratford, which she would have sent had 

 not untimely death forbidden. When this memorial tree 

 was planted in October, 1880, Mr. Shaw and his old actor 



friend, Mr. L , were both present, and threw in the first 



€arth to fill the excavation. 



But neither friends, nor books, nor music, nor drama, 

 nor all combined, gave half the pleasure and satisfaction 

 for the last twenty-five years of his life, which the Garden 

 and Park furnished him. He lived /or them, and as far as 

 was practicable, in them; walking or driving every day, 

 when weather and health allowed, and permitting no work 

 of importance to go on without more or less of his personal 

 inspection and direction. The late Dr. Asa Gray — than 

 whom there can be no higher authority — once said : "This 

 Park and the Botanical Garden are the finest institutions of 

 the kind in the country; in variety of foliage the Park is 

 unequaled." 



Exactly when the idea of creating what is now Tower 

 Grove Park first came to Mr. Shaw, is unknown ; but it 

 was doubtless suggested by what he had seen in Europe, 

 and took active shape when the Garden was firmly estab- 

 lished, and seemed to need some such supplementary ac- 

 companiment. The first steps were taken in 1866, but the 

 enterprise did not assume definite form until the following 

 year. Since then it has proceeded steadily and system- 

 atically, and, until his last illness, literally under the eye 

 of the man who conceived this "thing of beauty " to be 

 " a joy forever." More than 20,000 trees have been planted 



