106 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. 



hardly enough of the fragrant wood remains to encase 

 the lead of pencils. The hemlocks standing with their 

 bald, uncovered heads, or pointing their evergreen taper- 

 ing spires heavenward, would seem to be pleading for a 

 little respite from axe and saw and devouring flame ; 

 but no mercy was shown them. They have been de- 

 stroyed in season and out of season, in every conceivable 

 manner and for every conceivable purpose. Countless 

 numbers of them have been felled merely for their bark, 

 as many a desolated old " bark peehng " district will 

 show ; while the maples, the patricians of the forests, in 

 their vernal vesture delicate as the first wild blossoms 

 that nestle at their root, and in their autumnal foliage 

 flaming up like the cardinal flowers — trees whose wood 

 is fit for so many practical and beautiful uses — have been 

 subject to still worse treatment. After having their 

 sweet blood extracted year after year, until there was 

 no place on their scarred bodies where the sugar makers 

 could tap them more, they have been chopped into fire- 

 wood, and charred in coal pits and burned in log heaps, 

 until the^ beautiful and profitable sugar orchards that 

 once adorned so many pleasant hillsides in E'ew York 

 and 'New England are now only shown by blackened 

 stumps and straggling underbrush, young pollards 

 struggling for existence out of the graves of their 

 ancestors. 



When we return to the rural homes of our earlier 

 years, how our hearts go out to meet the pleasant groves 

 and shaded byways that helped to make that olden time 



