THE CELEBRATION OF ARBOR DAY 25 



Winter strips them of their ornaments and gives 

 them, as it' were, in prose translation, and summer 

 reclothes them in all the splendid phrases of their 

 leafy language. 



What are these maples and beeches and birches 

 but odes and idyls and madrigals ? What are these 

 pines and firs and spruces but holy hymns, too solemn 

 for the many-hued raiment of their gay deciduous 

 neighbors ? 



THE CELEBRATION OF ARBOR DAY 



BY MONCURE D. CONWAY 



(Extract from Letter) 



IT is a great pleasure to think of the young people 

 assembling to celebrate the planting of trees, and 

 connecting them with the names of authors whose 

 works are the further and higher products of our 

 dear old Mother Nature. An Oriental poet says 

 of his hero: 



Sunshine was he in a wintry place, 



And in the midsummer coolness and shade. 



Such are all true thinkers, and no truer monu- 

 ments of them can exist than beautiful trees. Our 

 word book is from the beech tablets on which men 

 used to write. Our word Bible is from the Greek 

 for bark of a tree. Our word paper is from the tree 

 papyrus the tree which Emerson found the most 



