i66 ARBOR DAY 



gave delightful animation. Everywhere, every- 

 where over all the blessed continent, there were 

 beauty, and melody, and kindly, wholesome, food- 

 ful abundance. 



These forests were composed of about five hun- 

 dred species of trees, all of them in some way useful 

 to man, ranging in size from twenty-five feet in 

 height and less than one foot in diameter at the 

 ground, to four hundred feet in height and more than 

 twenty feet in diameter lordly monarchs pro- 

 claiming the gospel of beauty like apostles. For 

 many a century after the ice-plows were melted, 

 nature fed them and dressed them every day; work- 

 ing like a man, a loving, devoted, painstaking 

 gardener; fingering every leaf and flower and 

 mossy furrowed bole; bending, trimming, modeling, 

 balancing, painting them with the loveliest colors; 

 bringing over them now clouds with cooling shadows 

 and showers, now sunshine; fanning them with 

 gentle winds and rustling their leaves; exercising 

 them in every fibre with storms, and pruning them; 

 loading them with flowers and fruit, loading them 

 with snow, and ever making them more beautiful 

 as the years rolled by. 



In the settlement and civilization of the country; 

 bread more than timber or beauty, was wanted; 

 and in the blindness of hunger, the early settlers, 

 claiming Heaven as their guide, regarded God's 



