IN PRAISE OF TREES 283 



farm-house, with its front flagged path coming down 

 to the road between two shaggy sugar boles, with a 

 great lilac-bush or two on the northern side, with 

 an arched woodshed neatly stacked with logs, and 

 across the way the gray barns and cattle at the 

 bars, was a unique contribution to the American 

 scene, and a type of simple architecture and simple 

 planting which for homely charm, the sense of solid 

 comfort, and, above all, for harmony with the nat- 

 ural landscape, has never since been equaled nor even 

 remotely approached. There is no reason, however, 

 why it should be allowed to perish. Our architects 

 are turning back to the Colonial ideals of simplicity 

 and sense of solid comfort in line and proportion, 

 and the maple-tree is a rapid grower. Beside a 

 corner of my house is a sugar-tree a foot thick at 

 breast height, and much taller than the house. It 

 was set out as a ten-foot sapling less than thirty 

 years ago. Before I pass on I expect to see it almost 

 as large as the trees in the long row of maples which 

 line the highway all down my boundary. A house 

 by a road thus lined seems snugly settled into its 

 place, with an aisle of cool shadow leading to the 

 door, and when, in spring, a pail shines at every 

 tree and as the warm sun mounts you hear the 

 tinkling drip of the sap, you have a sense that here 

 is a place where life is self-sustaining, sufficient unto 

 itself, rich with the fragrance of things of the soil. 

 I cannot imagine our highway without its maple- 

 trees nor wanting to live upon it when they are 

 gone. 



Joyce Kilmer, one of our poets who was taken 

 from us by the war, once wrote : 



