EVERGREENS. 215 



I recall a grove of Norway Spruce in an eastern state, where the 

 trees have grown straight as an arrow fifty feet high, and the 

 branches interlock so that no rays of the sun can penetrate. 

 There you see play houses of all kinds, swings and hammocks 

 are put up. There go the father and mother when wearied, 

 and it is home to the little ones. We cannot have Norway 

 Spruce except in the eastern part of the state, but we can have 

 the White Spruce of the Black hills, the Pungens, and the Con- 

 color of the Rockies, and the Austrian and Ponderosa pines. 



People have a wrong impression regarding the growth of 

 evergreens. One reason why nurserymen are so shy of them 

 is, they grow so rapidly, that very soon they are too large to 

 handle. Another wrong impression is they are too hard to 

 transplant, and the loss is so great it does not pay. I would as 

 soon agree to make one hundred Austrian pines live, as one 

 hundred Elm or Ash. They are just as sure if you handle them 

 right. A tree ten to fifteen inches high, twice transplanted, if 

 well handled, is quite sure to live. The first year it gets hold, 

 making but little growth. After that it shoots upward and out- 

 ward. As a general purpose tree for Kansas, Nebraska and 

 Iowa, by general consent, the Austrian pine leads everything. 

 I planted some in York about twenty-five years ago, and at the 

 same time planted some of the hardiest of Catalpas, and there 

 is but little difference in their growth. In thirty years you can 

 get quite a lot of lumber from an acre of pine. Let it grow 

 a while and then cut out the alternate rows. 



It is one of the strangest things on earth that men wiU not 

 look out for the future. They must have a crop they can har- 

 vest next year. The idea of planning for twenty-five or fifty 

 years ahead never occurs to them. For shame on a man if he 

 so lives that you can gather up all there is in him and bury it in 

 a narrow grave. A man should be immortal here. He ought 

 to raise something that will last longer than a corn stalk or a 

 straw stack, and yet that is about the limit of many a man's 

 ambition, no thought of the coming years or coming ages. 

 Plant a beautiful pine grove for your monument. Let your 

 grandchildren say, "Our grandfather planted these trees.'* 

 The expense is not so very great. Take it as you can, an acre 

 at a time. I think it takes about 700 trees to the acre. These 



