8 TREES AND TREE-PLANTING. 
“Stop thief!!! What is his life as compared to the 
life of the tree? If he were immediately to plant an- 
other, not in his lifetime, in that of his children or his 
children’s children, would the tree attain to maturity. 
All this he knows, yet he fells it to the earth and does not 
even plant another to replace it for future generations. 
Is not this man a vandal? Surely; and worse, for he is 
a criminal, and his seed shall suffer for his sins. If the 
trees could talk, what a pitiful tale they would tell. How 
they had for ages drawn moisture from the earth and 
distributed it through ten thousand leaves into the air, 
to descend again in showers, refreshing the earth and 
watering the gentle flowers. Even the tiny blades of 
green grass would cry out, 
‘*Oh, woodman, spare that tree, 
Touch not a single bough.” 
But they must perish from the earth; the fiat has 
gone forth, and we shall soon be able to say no more: 
“Thank God for noble trees! 
How stately, strong, and grand 
These bannered giants lift their crests 
O’er all this beauteous land.” 
They will be cut down and gone; and the shifting 
sands alone will mark where they once stood. The 
bleakness and barrenness of death will cover the earth, 
the sun pour down his vertical rays, and the scorching 
winds unchecked howl over the sterile plains. 
I fear you will think I am becoming excited over this 
subject, and I do warm up a little when speaking or 
writing of the murder of the beautiful trees, which in 
atrocity is little short of human murder itself. But it is 
not fine phrases or grandiloquent expressions we want 
in this case, but facts, cold arguments, to convince the un- 
reasoning and the ignorant. The voracious monster who 
threatens to devour all our young timber in his insatiable 
maw are the railroad interests of the United States. 
