GARLANDS AND ACACIAS 



occupation was the adorning of the inaccessible branches 

 with long streamers of coloured paper, previously manu- 

 factured at home guirlandes by name. These guirlandes, 

 some twenty or thirty feet long, were wound with sedulous 

 care round a suitable stone, leaving a small length as 

 trailer / the apparatus was then cast up in a parabola over 

 the tree-top. If the indirect fire was successful the trailer 

 caught in the leafage, unrolling the remainder and releasing 

 the ballasting stone. The most successful shot was, of 

 course, that which left the streamer properly entangled on 

 the topmost boughs. Each boy had his chosen and 

 declared colour, or mixture of colours / and the trophy 

 remained, flaunting his achievement " in its own tincts " 

 as long as wind or rain permitted. It afforded the small 

 breast a distinct satisfaction when, reaching the school of 

 a morning, the boy could see his pennant still flying in the 

 breeze. . . . 



Such is the strength of the association of ideas that I never 

 could come upon a roadside plantation of Acacias in the 

 hot plains of Hungary~where the tree is used as commonly 

 as in France the Poplar, that inevitable feature of the great 

 highways without adorning it in imagination with the 

 multi-coloured guirlandes of my first school. 



If there was no reasonable accounting for the presence of 

 Acacias at the Institution Delescluze, the great Poplar, 

 on the other hand, that raised its height in the very centre 

 of the cour, had a well-authenticated history. A relic 

 of Revolution days, it was then in its eighth decade, in the 

 strength of its age , having been planted, at the same time 



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