NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



23 



For the New England Farmer. 

 A TALE ABOUT SHADE-TREES. 



BY JOSEPH G. HOYT. 



The propriety and pleasure of cultivating orna 

 mental trees both in private and in public, in win 

 ter as well as summer, you and I, Mr. Editor, have 

 taken for granted so long that it seems to us, re- 

 clining "sub tegmine fagi," almost an insult to 

 common sense to urge anything further on the 

 subject. For myself I am a born Druid, and al 

 ways look upon a tree with a feeling of old Celtic 

 reverence. There is something in its graceful 

 form, its living beauty, its overshadowing protec- 

 tion, its answering voice to every questioning wind, 

 which seems to endow it, not only with the physi- 

 cal attributes, but with the intelligence of an ex- 

 alted humanity. Whatever other skepticism I may 

 have been guilty of, I never entertained an "unbe- 

 lieving doubt," that Shakspeare found "tongues in 

 trees," or that the priestesses of Epirus did receive 

 from the sacred oak in Dodona the very prophe- 

 cies which they proclaimed to the. people. But if 

 in these latter days of "noise and confusion," of 

 clattering engines and "spiritual knockings," we 

 cannot hear the small voice, nor understand the 

 dialect of the "speaking oak," yet at least, to one 

 who has eyes to see, the tree, whether bending un- 

 der the green luxuriance of summer, or decked in 

 the crimson glory of autumn, or defying in its na- 

 ked strength the wintry tempest, is one of the most 

 beautiful and majestic objects of nature. To praise 

 it, as well as 



"To throw a perfume on the violet, 

 Is wasteful and ridiculous excess." 



In listening, therefore, to any eulogy upon the oak, 

 or elm, or rock-maple, the initiated few feel very 

 much as the old Greek poet, when with a sort of 

 indignant impatience he said to the encomiast of 

 Hercules — "who ever censured him?" Such un- 

 doubtedly is the feeling of you, metropolitan scrib- 

 blers, who, with a true Eastern devotion, worship 

 three times a day every green thing, from "the 

 cedar-tree even unto the hyssop that springeth out 

 of the wall." 



But notwithstanding all this, there are unfortu 

 nately vandals yet in the outer world, or what is 

 worse, willing slaves of mammon — men, who grad- 

 uate everything on the scale of dollars and cents ; 

 men, who see no value in anything unless it may 

 be converted into ready money or rail-road stock ; 

 men, on whose land a tree stands or falls accord- 

 ing to the probable amount of moisture and manure 

 which it takes from the soil, or the extent of shade 

 which it flings over a potato patch. Show one of 

 these bovine worshippers of the golden calf a ma- 

 ple, or a beech with its beautiful foliage, — and he 

 will tell you that hard wood, if well cured, will 

 fetch on the wharf $7,50 per cord. Call his atten- 

 tion to a splendid landscape, — and he estimates its 

 beauty and sublimity by its price per acre in the 

 market. Bid him look at the majestic cataract, — 

 and he sees not the rainbow which bends over it ; 

 for his eye is parcelling out the wild flood into 

 streams of proper size for factories and grist-mills, — 

 he hears not the awful anthem which it sings ; for 

 his ear is listening to the music of saws and wheels 

 yet to be. Such men there are in the world, "'tis 

 true; 'tis true, 'tis pity ; and pity 'tis, 'tis true." 

 One such, by the way, I unhappily know, not a 

 thousand miles from this village — a man "of whom 



the world is not worthy ;" nor, indeed, do I now 

 think of any place that is worthy of him. Pollok 

 tells us that the slave of money, the gloating miser, 

 with the power of an old habit fastened on him, 

 would be a dangerous man in heaven — dangerous 

 lest he strip the gold from the golden streets and 

 the pearls from the jeweled gates. If this be true 

 in any sense, as undoubtedly it is, how could he be 

 considered a safe man there, who, in the light of 

 open day, in sight of church-steeples and school- 

 houses, would hew down a colonnade of nearly a 

 hundred stately elms, the growth of half a century, 

 the pride of the street, the admiration of every pass- 

 er-by, because, forsooth, "they sapped the ground" 

 and would not bear cider apples'? The most beau- 

 tiful and attractive word ever employed in Holy 

 Writ, as descriptive of heaven, is the word para- 

 dise — a garden full of trees. What would such a 

 man, as the one to whom 1 have referred, do among 

 those upper trees? Give him the power, and, with 

 his nature unchanged, his identity of character pre- 

 served, he would cut them down into market length 

 and smuggle them across the "fixed gulf," of which 

 we read, to be sold for fuel on the other side ! 



I have no patience with such men or with the 

 miserable philosophy which they act out in their 

 daily life. We were made to be lovers of beauty 

 as well as of money — with eyes as well as appe- 

 tites — with souls as well as stomachs. Why does 

 the brook run winding through the meadow, when 

 it might have reached the ocean by a shorter, and 

 therefore more practical and economical course ? 

 Why is the bird painted with parti-colored plumage, 

 when it could have lived and died a dingy white? 

 Why is its voice imbued with a melody sweet as 

 the morning music of Memnon, when it might, like 

 the earth-worm, have discharged all the functions 

 of its social nature without a sound? "To what 

 purpose is all this waste?" 



But trees on a street before a house or house-lot 

 are not without their advantages in a pecuniary 

 point of view. They increase the merchantable 

 value of real estate. There is, for instance, in this 

 town, an estate, known as the "Judge Smith place," 

 now owned by one of our best farmers, J. L. Cil- 

 ley, Esq., which, surrounded as it is with magnifi- 

 cent trees, would, if it were for sale, bring to-day, 

 in any civilized community, $3000 more than it 

 would if no shade-trees waved over it. Not only 

 so, but it lends a charm to the whole neighborhood 

 around. Every tree planted and raised is an invest- 

 ment, "in perpetuum,'''' in an annuity office for the 

 benefit of every citizen in the community and his 

 descendants. The more beautiful a village is ren- 

 dered, the more attractive it will be as a place of 

 residence and the more valuable will property be- 

 come in it. 



But, besides this pecuniary consideration, trees 

 give property a value which cannot be reckoned in 

 dollars and cents. They gather around themselves 

 a thousand associations— associations connected 

 with all that is pleasant in our recollections of 

 childhood and innocence and parental love. We 

 respond from our "heart of hearts" to the song of 

 "Woodman spare that tree." We would no soon- 

 er touch a single bough of the tree which sheltered 

 our youth, than we would mutilate the face of a 

 sleeping child, or disfigure the portrait of a friend 

 in heaven. It is sacred to memory, and, though it 

 may have been an unshapely pine, yet the old 

 homestead would be a desert spot without it. Ev 



