34 . State Horticultural Society. 



r 



of the setting day. They cover the plains with their phimed and ban- 

 nered hosts. They bring the clouds from afar and make the pitying 

 heavens dissolve in rain when the parched earth is panting with thirst." 

 After the summer shower, every leaf becomes *a pendant, hung with 

 diamonds and pearls, and tremulous with splendor and mystery. And 

 their dying splendor is just as gracious. Last autumn I stood upon a 

 hill and looked upon rich and verdant valleys stretching away on every 

 side. A river, skirted by forests, lay yonder in the distance. The scene 

 presented to the eye was a panorama of indescribable beauty. The 

 woods were carpeted with velvet and tapestried with purple, decorated 

 with chaplets and garlands, festoons of scarlet vines and tassels of gold. 

 It seemed as if the gates of heaven had been opened and all the splen- 

 dors of the Golden City had been showered upon the autumn woods. 

 No artist's -brush could imitate it; no poet's song describe it; no tasteful 

 eye could weary in beholding. The heart alone can celebrate such 

 beauty with an uplift of devotion. 



Of all the living things of earth, the trees afford us the best symbol 

 of our immortality. It is said that far back in the history of the past a 

 wind-wafted seed fell into the fertile soil of a mountain valley in Cali- 

 fornia. It was among the smallest of seeds. It was cased in a hard 

 and dry husk, and it soon mingled with the dust. But, in dying, it 

 gave life to a tender, thread-like stalk that rose slowly and tremblingly 

 to light and air. At that time God was calling Abraham to leave the 

 home of his fathers in Ur of the Chaldees. When Abraham died, after 

 a hundred years had passed on, that delicate thread of green had become 

 a great tree. Since then 4,000 years of conflict and change have passed 

 over the earth, and still that mighty tree is lifting its towering column 

 of green verdure toward the skies. Springing from the decay of one 

 small seed, that was buried in the ground thousands of years ago. It 

 has flourished in perennial beauty, while 120 generations of men have 

 appeared on earth and passed away. 



What an impressive symbol of the soul's immortality is found in 

 this long-living and evergreen tree. This body of ours, which is the 

 husk of the soul, shall be buried in the earth. Like the puny seed of 

 4,000 years ago, it shall molder and mingle with the dust from which 

 it sprang. But from its ashes there shall come forth the germs of a new 

 and an immortal life which shall be clothed in a spiritual and deathless 

 body. New faculties shall shoot forth from the growth of the immortal 

 mind as new branches are sent out from the trunk of the growing tree, 

 until it passes the highest reach of this earthly life as much as the mighty 

 California pine surpasses the seed which died in giving it birth. 



