204 CONVERSATIONS. 



of weeping willow has been given to it. 

 When people are very much afflicted, they 

 droop, and seem to be, as it were, weighed 

 down with sorrow : the branches of the 

 weeping willow hang drooping towards the 

 ground ; and their appearance, to a fanciful 

 eye, has something of the character of mourn- 

 ing ; and therefore the tree is represented upon 

 tomb-stones as an emblem of the grief occa- 

 sioned by the death of relatives or friends.'- 



