254 A Walk, from 



a coming generation ! They are the most generous 

 crops ever sown by human hands. All others the 

 sower reaps and garners into his own personal enjoy- 

 ment ; but this yields its best harvest to those who 

 come after him. This is a seeding for posterity. 

 From this well of Baca shall they draw the cooling 

 luxury of the gift when the hands that made it shall 

 have gone to dust. 



And this is a good place and time to think of home 

 of what we begin to hear called by her younger 

 children, Old New England. Trees with us have 

 passed through the two periods specified by Solomon 

 " a time to plant and a time to pluck up." The 

 last came first and lasted for a century. Trees were 

 the natural enemies to the first settlers, and ranked 

 in their estimation with the wild Indians, wolves and 

 bears. It was their first, great business to cut them 

 down, both great and small. Forests fell before the 

 woodman's axe. It made clean work, and seldom 

 spared an oak or an elm. But, at the end of a 

 century, the people relented and felt their mistake. 

 Then commenced " the time to plant ;" first in and 

 around cities like Boston, Hartford and New Haven, 

 then about villages and private homesteads. Tree- 

 planting for use and ornament marks and measures 

 the footsteps of our civilization. The present genera- 



