106 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. 
hardly enough of the fragrant wood remains to encase 
the lead of pencils. The hemlocks standing with their 
bald, uncovered heads, or pointing their evergreen taper- 
ing spires heavenward, would seem to be pleading for a 
little respite from axe and saw and devouring flame; 
but no mercy was shown them. They have been de- 
stroyed in season and out of season, in every conceivable 
manner and for every conceivable purpose. Countless 
numbers of them have been felled merely for their bark, 
as many a desolated old “bark peeling” district will 
show ; while the maples, the patricians of the forests, in 
their vernal vesture delicate as the first wild blossoms 
that nestle at their root, and in their autumnal foliage 
flaming up like the cardinal flowers—trees whose wood 
is fit for somany practical and beautiful uses—have been 
subject to still worse treatment. After having their 
sweet blood extracted year after year, until there was 
no place on their scarred bodies where the sugar makers 
could tap them more, they have been chopped into fire- 
wood, and charred in coal pits and burned in log heaps, 
until the beautiful and profitable sugar orchards that 
once adorned so many pleasant hillsides in New York 
and New England are now only shown by blackened 
stumps and straggling underbrush, young pollards 
struggling for existence out of the graves of their 
ancestors. : 
When we return to the rural homes of our earlier 
years, how our hearts go out to meet the pleasant groves 
and shaded byways that helped to make that olden time 
