i 4 2 ARBOR DAY 



I want you to understand, in the first place, that I 

 have a most intense, passionate fondness for trees 

 in general, and have had several romantic attach- 

 ments to certain trees in particular. 



I shall speak of trees as we see them, love them, 

 adore them in the fields, where they are alive, hold- 

 ing their green sunshades over our heads, talking to 

 us with their hundred thousand whispering tongues, 

 looking down on us with that sweet meekness which 

 belongs to huge, but limited, organisms which 

 one sees in the brown eyes of oxen, but most in 

 the patient posture, the outstretched arms, and 

 the heavy-drooping robes of these vast beings 

 endowed with life, but not with soul which 

 outgrow us and outlive us, but stand helpless 

 poor things! while Nature dresses and undresses 

 them, like so many full-sized, but under-witted, 

 children. 



Just think of applying the Linnaean system to 

 an elm! Who cares how many stamens or pistils 

 that little brown flower, which comes out before the 

 leaf, may have to classify it by ? What we want 

 is the meaning, the character, the expression of a 

 tree, as a kind and as an individual. 



There is a mother-idea in each particular kind of 

 tree, which, if well marked, is probably embodied 

 in the poetry of every language. Take the oak, for 

 instance, and we find it always standing as a type 

 of strength and endurance. I wonder if you ever 



