CHAPTER XXXIV 

 TREES IN TOWNS AND VILLAGES* 



THE man who loves not trees, to look at them, to lie 

 under them, to climb up them (once more a school- 

 boy), would make no bones of murdering Mrs. 

 Jeffs. In what one imaginable attribute that it ought to 

 possess is a tree deficient? Light, shade, shelter, coolness, 

 freshness, music, all the colors of the rainbow, dew and 

 dreams dropping through their soft twilight, at eve and 

 morn, - - dropping direct, soft, sweet, soothing, restorative 

 from heaven. \Vithout trees, how, in the name of wonder, 

 could we have had houses, ships, bridges, easy chairs, or 

 coffins, or almost any single one of the necessaries, comforts, 

 or conveniences of life? Without trees, one might have 

 been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but not another 

 with a wooden ladle." 



Every man, who has in his nature a spark of sympathy with 

 the good and beautiful, must involuntarily respond to this 

 rhapsody of Christopher North's in behalf of trees - - the 

 noblest and proudest drapery that sets off the figure of our 

 fair planet. Every man's better sentiments would invol- 

 untarily lead him to cherish, respect, and admire trees. 

 And no one who has sense enough rightly to understand the 

 wonderful system of life, order, and harmony, that is in- 

 volved in one of our grand and majestic forest trees, could 

 ever destroy it unnecessarily without a painful feeling, we 

 should say, akin at least to murder in the fourth degree. 



Yet it must be confessed that it is surprising when, from 

 the force of circumstances what the phrenologists call the 

 principle of destructiveness gets excited, how sadly men's 

 better feelings are warped and smothered. Thus old sol- 



* Original date of March, 1847. 

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