ARDOR DA V MAX UAL. 211 



A NEW HOLIDAY. 



ANEW holiday is a boon to Americans, and this year the month of May gave 

 a new holiday to the State of Xew York. It has been already observed 

 elsewhere. It began, indeed, in Nebraska seventeen years ago, and thirty-four 

 States and two Territories have preceded New York in adopting it. If the name 

 of Arbor Day may seem to be a little misleading, because the word " arbor,' 

 which meant a tree to the Romans, means a bower to Americans, yet it may well 

 serve until a better name is suggested, and its significance by general under- 

 standing will soon be as plain as Decoration Day. 



The holiday has been happily associated in this -State especially with the 

 public schools. This is most fitting, because the publfc school is the true and 

 universal symbol of the equal rights of all citizens before the law, and of the 

 fact that educated intelligence is the basis of good popular government. The 

 more generous the cultivation of th,e mind, and the wider the range of knowl- 

 edge, the more secure is the great national commonwealth. The intimate asso- 

 ciation of the schools with tree-planting is fortunate in attracting boys and 

 girls to a love and knowledge of nature, and to a respect for trees because of 

 their value to the whole community. 



The scheme for the inauguration of the holiday in New York was issued by 

 the Superintendent of Public Instruction. It provided for simple and proper 

 exercises, the recitation of brief passages from English literature relating to 

 trees, songs about trees sung by the children, addresses, and planting of trees, 

 to be named for distinguished persons of every kind. 



The texts for such addresses are indeed as numerous as the trees, and there 

 may be an endless improvement of the occasion, to the pleasure and the profit 

 of the scholars. They may be reminded that our knowledge of trees begins at 

 a very early age, even their own, and that it. usually begins with a close and 

 thorough knowledge of the birch. 



This, indeed, might be called the earliest service of the tree to the child, if 

 we did not recall the cradle and the crib. The child rocking in the cradle is the 

 baby rocking in the tree-top, and as the child hears the nurse droning her 

 drowsy rock-a-bye, baby, it may imagine that it hears the wind sighing through 

 the branches of the tree. To identify the tree with human life and to give the 

 pupil a personal interest in it will make the public school nurseries of sound 

 opinion which will prevent the ruthless destruction of the forests. 



The service of the trees to us begins with the cradle and ends with the coffin. 

 But it continues through our lives, and is of almost unimaginable extent and 

 variety. In this country our houses and their furniture and the fences that 

 inclose them are largely the product of the trees. The fuel that warms them, 

 even if it be coal, is the mineralized wood of past ages. The frames and handles 

 of agricultural implements, wharves, boats, ships, India-rubber, gums, bark, 

 cork, carriages and railroad cars and ties wherever the eye falls it sees the 

 beneficent service of the trees. Arbor Day recalls this direct service on even- 

 hand, and reminds us of the indirect ministry of trees as guardians of the 

 sources of rivers the great forests making the densely shaded hills, covered 



