ARBOR DA Y MANUAL. 



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Who ever sees a hawthorn or a sweet brier (the eglantine), that his thoughts 

 do not, like a bolt of light, burst through ranks of poets, and ranges of spark- 

 ling conceits which have been born since England had a written language, and 

 of which the rose, the willow, the eglantine, the hawthorn, and other scores of 

 vines or trees, have been the cause, as they are now and forevermore the sug- 

 gestors and remembrancers ? Who ever looks upon an oak, and does not think 

 of navies, of storms, of battles on the ocean, of the noble lyrics of the sea, of 

 English glades, of the fugitive Charles, the tree-mounted monarch, of the 

 Herne oak, of parks and forests, of Robin Hood and his merry men, Friar 

 Tuck not excepted; of old baronial halls with mellow light streaming through 

 diamond-shaped panes upon oaken floors, and of carved oaken wainscotings. 

 And who that has ever traveled in English second-class cushionless cars has 

 not other and less genial remembrances of the enduring solidity of the imper- 

 vious unelastic oak r 



One stalwart oak I have, and only one, yet discovered. On my west line is a 

 fringe of forest, through which rushes, in spring, trickles in early summer, and 

 dies out entirely in August, the issues of a noble spring from the near hill-side. 

 On ihe eastern edge of this belt of trees stands the monarchical oak, wide- 

 branching on the east toward the open pasture and the free light, but on its 

 western side lean and branchless from the pressure of neighboring trees ; for 

 trees, like men, cannot grow to the real nature that is in them when crowded 

 by too much society. Both need to be touched on every side by sun and air, 

 and by nothing else, if they are to be rounded out into full symmetry. Grow- 

 ing right up by its side, and through its branches is a long wifely elm beauty 

 and grace imbosomed by strength. Their leaves come and go together, and 

 all the summer long they mingle their rustling harmonies. Their roots pasture 

 in the same soil, nor could either of them be hewn down without tearing away 

 the branches and marring the beauty of the other. And a tree, when thor- 

 oughly disbranched, may, by time and care, regain its health again, but never 

 its beauty. 



Under this oak I love to sit and hear all the things which its leaves have to 

 tell. No printed leaves have more treasures of history or of literature to those 

 who know how to listen. But, if clouds kindlv shield us from the sun, we love 

 as well to crouch down on the grass some thirty yards off, and amidst the fra- 

 grant smell of crushed herbs, to watch the fancies of the trees and clouds. 

 The roguish winds will never be done teasing the leaves, that run away and 

 come back, with nimble playfulness. Now and then a stronger puff dashes up 

 the leaves, showing the downy under surfaces that flash white all along the up- 

 blown and tremulous forest edge. Now the wind draws back his breath, and 

 all the woods are still. Then some single leaf is tickled, and quivers all alone. 

 I am sure there is no wind. The other leaves about it are still. Where it gets 

 its motion I cannot tell, but there it goes fanning itself and restless among its 

 sober fellows. By and by one or two others catch the impulse. The rest hold 

 out a moment, but soon catching the contagious merriment, away goes the 

 whole tree and all its neighbors, the leaves running in ripples all down the 

 forest side. I expect almost to hear them laugh out loud. A stroke of wind 

 upon the forest, indolently swelling and subsiding, is like a stroke upon a hive 



