Xan&marfcs 



old tree. We are forever building monuments, but 

 why not let those stand which Nature set up, even 

 before the white man appeared upon the scene, and 

 which were landmarks to our ancestors as well as 

 to ourselves ? We cherish Washington elms, Stuy- 

 vesant pear-trees, and Penn's treaty elm, because 

 the men named once stood in their shade. Is it 

 not as suggestive that an Indian once stood, it 

 may be, under an oak and harangued his people ? 

 But, even if forsaken of all men, there is not a tree 

 that has weathered two or three centuries but is as 

 worthy of regard now as the scattered growths 

 that happened to become associated with some- 

 body's name. No mere association can the more 

 ennoble a majestic elm. Because an oak, still 

 standing, was riddled by bullets during the Rev- 

 olution, it has no additional dignity. The mur- 

 mur of the breeze through its branches is more 

 musical than the whistling of hot lead. There is 

 many an old tree still standing, but quite disre- 

 garded, because, as you say, it is nobody's oak or 

 elm. No great man ever saw it or stood beneath 

 its branches, so why should you ? What rubbish ! 

 It is everybody's tree, teaching lessons, if you will 

 but learn, that will greatly aid you on your jour- 

 ney through life. Tree-worship, once so common 

 and still existing, is now accounted among us as 

 trivial and evidence of a low order of intellectual- 

 ity, even among savages; but it is not as be- 

 littling as our modern hero-worship. 

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