MISPLACED HEDGES, WINDBREAKS, ETC. 



inheritance of barbarism. The Malay runs amuck 

 among his neighbors ; the farmer runs amuck among 

 trees. He must cut something when the spirit is 

 on ; so down goes the grand old tree that stood one 

 hundred years before that fellow was in his cradle : 

 a tree that has housed a thousand birds. I know a 

 man who would go crazy at certain periods of the 

 year if he could not lord it over his trees. He plants 

 orchards, and cuts down others. He is surrounded 

 by a queer combination of the garden of Eden and 

 the Sahara desert. Another neighbor has so identi- 

 fied himself with every bush that he cannot endure 

 to have the old wreckage cut away. His house is 

 in a wood lot. Seek the middle road. Remove 

 promptly the decayed and the hopeless; but love 

 trees with a tenderness that is protective. Not long 

 since some of the pioneer poplars of the streets of 

 Chicago were slain. The people could not stop it. 

 They begged and used every possible argument in 

 vain. When the foreman came to the last tree, a 

 quiet old gentleman who seemed too gentle to say 

 "shoo !" to a fly, walked up to him, looked him in the 

 eye, and with infinite contempt said, "Save the last 

 one, sir, to hang yourself on." 



You can, however, do very little in the way of 

 developing the grandest site with hedges, windbreaks 

 and shelters, if you have misplaced your house. I 

 am astonished at the persistence which Americans 

 show in building close by the roadside, where they 

 get no advantages except publicity and dust. The 

 true place for a house is, other things being equal, 

 as near the center of your property as it can be placed. 

 Of course we are to consider the relation of the 



