70 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS 



gorgeous in their autumn beauty, the sweeping winds will raise the strain 

 into a stronger symphony ; and, defying the blasts of winter, each noble 

 stem shall remain as an enduring monument of the planter, while the 

 leafless branches, and their neighbors, the evergreens, will whisper in a 

 language that man and beast alike understand : come and seek the shelter 

 given through the bounty of the planter. ' So birds will gather from year 

 to year, and from generation to generation, within their leafy coverts, and 

 trill their songs to the All Giver. 



When generations shall have come and gone ; when the family name 

 of the planter shall, perhaps, in the course of generations, have become 

 extinct ; still these trees may wax in strength, and grow into great land- 

 marks, strong and mighty, rejoicing in their wealth of timber. 



Even the giant oak of the forest, which waves its leaves in the air 

 for five hundred years or more, must succumb at last to time, and another 

 five hundred years in the natural process of decay may see it turned again 

 into dust. So he whom we mourn, having lived his allotted time, has 

 yielded up his body to the earth, from whence it came. The birds of 

 the air, the beasts of the field, and the trees of the forest perish. Not 

 so the spirit of man. The warrior smites thousands on the field of battle 

 that he may be glorified among men ; the statesman rules the councils of 

 a nation that his name may be great before the people ; the potentate 

 conquors an empire for his own aggrandizement. If the grand deeds 

 done in the body are remembered in heaven, which should the rising 

 generation rather emulate, one of these or our honored dead ? who, while 

 humbly and cheerfully working on his farm, or in his garden and orchard, 

 as earnestly and cheerfully labored for his friends and brethren, and who, 

 at the same time, reared so enduring a record to his honor and glory. 

 Let us hope the orchards and forest trees he has planted, or those which 

 may be produced from them, may stand as long, and endure to the mem- 

 ory of the planter, as have the mammoth conifera of California, so grandly 

 described by our horticultural poet Hempstead, who says : 



" They were green when in the rushes lay and moaned the Hebrew child ; 

 They were growing when the granite of the Pyramids was piled. 

 Green when Punic hosts, at Cannae, bound the victor's gory sheaves, 

 And the grim and mangled Romans lay around like autumn leaves ; 

 From their tops the crows were calling when the streets of Rome were grass, 

 And the brave Three Hundred with their bodies blocked the rocky pass ; 

 In their boughs the owl was hooting when upon the Hill of Mars 

 Paul rung out the coming judgment, pointing uj^ward to the stars ; 

 Here, with loving hand transplanted, in the noonday breeze they wave, 

 And by night in silent seas of silver-arrowed moonbeams lave." 



