IN PRAISE OF TREES 269 



day I sadly hewed it down no slight task and 

 worked it up into a cord of wood. The stump showed 

 it to be between seventy -five and a hundred years 

 old. As my house was built in 1829, it was probably 

 set out at about the same time, and was three gen- 

 erations in developing into a fine old ornament to 

 the lawn and dwelling. Since we Americans have 

 been in too much of a hurry to wait three generations 

 for our landscape effects, and since few of our fam- 

 ilies ever live on the same place even for two gener- 

 ations, about the only way to achieve fine trees 

 around your house would seem to be to buy a piece 

 of forest if you can find even forest trees now 

 more than thirty years old! 



Yet the same road to the village which passes by 

 the great sycamore runs for a quarter of a mile 

 through a swampy wood, and on this stretch is 

 found an arboreal effect so entirely artless, charm- 

 ing, and spontaneous that I frequently pause to 

 observe it, thinking at the same time of a certain 

 million-dollar estate in our most "fashionable" re- 

 sort town where exotic Lombardy poplars have been 

 planted in formal, naked rows with no resultant 

 charm whatever. Fringing the road on either side 

 are tall brake, joepye-weed, asters, red osier dog- 

 wood, and the like, a flower border in the warmer 

 months, a fringe of tracery above the snow in winter. 

 Just behind these borders stand, in casual, irregular 

 rows, slender olive poplars, rising to forest height 

 because they are crowded from behind by the hem- 

 locks of the swamp. Scattered through them are a 

 few gray American hornbeams (ironwood), and a 

 few shad-bushes and swamp-maples, to dress the 



