ARBOR DA Y MANUAL. 357 



SPECIMEN PROGRAMS. 



PORT HENRY, N. Y. 



Arranged by Professor \V. H BENEDICT, now of the public schools of Elmira. N. Y., for Arbor Day, 



May 3, 1889. 



Selections marked thus * are given in this volume. 



PROGRAM. 



1. Chorus. *" Hymn in Praise of the Natural World." High School. 

 The singing was accompanied by an organ and two violins. 

 2. Reading of letters from distinguished persons, by members of the High School. 



From Hon. J. Sterling Morton, ex-Governor of Nebraska, and the author of Arbor 

 Day. 



ARBOR LODGE, Nebraska City, Neb., April 20, 1889. 



DEAR SIR All other anniversaries refer to the past and its dead. Arbor Day alone 

 deals with the present and the future. It stretches its sheltering shades over the unborn 

 millions of coming generations and in the voices of the leafy woods pronounces benedic- 

 tions upon posterity. Faithfully yours, 



J. STERLING MORTON. 



From George William Curtis. Vice-Chancellor of the University of the State of New 

 York. 



WEST NEW BRIGHTON, Staten Island. April 17, 1889. 



DEAR SIR I am very glad that you propose fitting observance of Arbor Day, which I 

 ihink may be easily made one of the most interesting of our holidays. There is proba- 

 bly not one of the pupils in your school who has not a fondness for pet animals, for 

 horses, dogs, cats, squirrels, rabbits, and the charm lies largely in its life and its depend- 

 ence upon its master. Arbor Day will enlarge this friendly relation, so as to include 

 trees, and by and by. perhaps, shrubs and flowering plants. They too are living, and for 

 their proper growth and development the}- will depend largely upon the care and intelli- 

 gence of the boys and girls who are interested in them. 



This interest will be fostered as in the case of the pet animals by the individual relation 

 between the trees and those who plant them. It will be stimulated by the names to be 

 given to the trees, and by the desire to honor distinguished men and women by carefully 

 tending the trees that bear their names. All this will gradually lead inevitably to special 

 knowledge of the structure, character, growth, and uses of trees, to enjoyment of the 

 allusions to them in literature, and their association with historical events, fike the Char- 

 ter Oak in Hartford and Sir Philip Sidney's oak at Penshurst, which was planted at his 

 birth and which Ben. Johnson and Edmund Waller commemorated, and the Abbot's oak, 

 and William the Conqueror's oak at Windsor Park. 



With this will come a keener interest in the significance of trees and plants in national 

 usages, and in popular belief and proverbs, " There's rosemary, that's remembrance." To 

 be clad in mourning was to wear the Willow. Old Fuller, the English worthy, calls the 

 willow a sad tree, and the forsaken lover sang " all around my hat I wear a green willow." 

 The Jews in captivity hung their harps upon the willows, and to describe a melancholy 

 landscape Sir Walter Scott in the Lay of the Last Minstrel sings of ' along the wild and 

 willowed shore." It was upon the Beech tree that lovers, long before America was dis- 

 covered, carved the names of their sweethearts, and it was upon the tree of which Amiens 

 sung that Shakespeare's Orlando hung his verses to Rosalind. It was the trees of Arden- 

 nes that waved their leaves over the soldiers marching to Waterloo, "Grieving, if aught 

 inanimate e'er grieves over the unreturning brave." Thus in even- way trees are inwrought 

 with literature as with art. 



" The groves were God's first temples," and Gothic architecture reproduces the long 

 drawn aisles and fretted vault of the pine forest. 



As the student advances into Latin and Greek, he will find trees springing up all around 

 him :n the form of allusions in the chaplets, wreaths and crowns that were woven from 

 their leaves, although they do not appear in the classic poets as figures of beauty in the 



