WAY-SIDE HINTS. 109 



soon passes away. Very many of the smooth-barked 

 trees, such as beech, birch, maple, and sycamore, will 

 hold their bark firmly if precautions be taken to 

 exclude the air by varnishing the ends and all such cuts 

 as have been made by the excision of a limb. Old 

 and slow-growing wood will, it must be observed, 

 have less shrinkage, and maintain a better bark sur- 

 face, than young saplings or trees of rapid growth. 

 But, irrespective of all questions of durability, is 

 there not something rurally attractive in this unpre- 

 tending porch, whose columns have come from, the 

 forest, and whose overarching arms are the arms that 

 overarch God's temples of the wood ? Not lacking, 

 surely, some elements of the beautiful in itself; and 

 at the door of a village clergyman, with the ivy show- 

 ing its glossy leaflets in wealthy labyrinth, and the 

 convolvulus twining up at the base upon whatever 

 vine-hold may offer, and handing out its purple chali- 

 ces to catch the dews of the morning is there noth- 

 ing to be emulated in this? Let those who love 

 Nature's simplest graces, answer. 



On Not Doing All at Once. 



THERE are a great many ardently progressive 

 people who will be shocked by the caption 

 under which I write. The current American theory 



