ARBOR DAY ITS HISTORY AND OBSERVANCE. 



29 



year to year. Those most familiar, wherever we may be, are ever entering the study 

 of our imagination and often giving direction even to our acts. "The shepherd," as 

 with exquisite pathos has been said by Wordsworth, "is half a shepherd on the 

 stormy sea, and hears in piping shrouds the tones of waterfalls and inland sounds of 

 caves and trees ; and in the bosom of the deep sees mountains, sees the forms of sheep 

 that grazed on verdant hills." 



Arbor Day, repeated in our schools from year to year, will cultivate a reverent love 

 of nature, will lead our children to value studious walks along our streams and hills 

 and through our winding valleys and wide, windy sweeps of harvest fields and 

 meadows, and into our bosky dells to waken cour- 

 teous Echo to give them answer from her mossy 

 couch. 



There is, indeed, a power and a culturing beauty 

 in all this which every child may experience if he 

 will; and Arbor Day serves to enforce it upon his 

 thought. Why should not our school children 

 cherish a holiday which brings them into direct 

 sympathy with the sweet companionship of man 

 with nature? Why should they not offer their aid 

 in giving to our school-grounds green lawns over 

 which the wind-stirred trees may scatter gold and 

 porphyry where the laughing daffodils may wel- 

 come the returning swallows, and glowing clusters 

 of chrysanthemums may soften the cold of autumn 

 winds with thoughts of summer? Why should they 

 not surround their school home, which they must 

 so soon leave for the harsh toil of business life, with 

 all that can make the memory of it a joy forever? 



VALUE AND USES OF ARBOR DAY 



A very just tribute to the value and uses 

 of Arbor Day will be fouud in the address 

 of Prof. George Mull, of Franklin and Mar- 

 shall College, in connection with the observ- 

 ance of the day at the High School, Lan- 

 caster, Pa. : 



Arbor Day is 110 longer a novelty, contiued here 

 and there to isolated districts, and attracting atten- 

 tion in the minds of few as a conspicuous evidence 

 of an enlightened public sentiment in a few favored 

 localities. A good thing is always sure to make its 

 way, and it can not be said that this particular 

 good thing which claims our consideration to-day 

 was slow in making its way into the heart of public-school life throughout the 

 length and breadth of our country. Scarcely heard of, barely thought of, a 

 few years ago, it was possible to make the statement, at the American Forestry 

 Congress, last December, that Arbor Day is now kept in nearly every State of the 

 Union and in some of the Territories, and, indeed, in one State, South Carolina, 

 a whole week is now devoted annually to tree planting. Such a rapid and wide- 

 spread adoption of the custom is a sufficient indication of the merits of its claim to 

 popular favor. It is hardly time yet to count the cost and estimate the results, but 

 from what has already been done there can be ho doubt that the practical benefits 

 accruing to the material well-being of the country from the faithful observance of the 



