170 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD. 



lines from an old poem, "The Beech Tree's Lament," 

 by Thomas Campbell, uttered by the beech : 



" Thrice twenty summers I have seen 

 The sky grow bright, the forest green ; 

 And many a wintry wind have stood 

 In bloomless, fruitless solitude, 

 Since childhood in my pleasant bower 

 First spent its sweet and sportive hour ; 

 Since youthful lovers in my shade 

 Their vows of truth and rapture made ; 

 And on my trunk's surviving frame 

 Carved many a long-forgotten name." 



Who shall, asks Bryant also, speaking of his future 

 forest, 



" Who grave, as was the wont 

 Of simple, pastoral ages, on the rind 

 Of my smooth beeches some beloved name?" 



A beech is the best, and the tree most frequently 

 chosen, on account of its smooth, easily-cut bark. It 

 is the pleasantest and most yielding to the knife; and 

 initials carved on a beech, if they have been dug deep 

 into the sap wood beneath the bark, are retained much 

 longer than on any other tree. "No bark," says Gilpin, 

 "tempts the lover so much to make it the depository 

 of his mistress's name." I have seen old beeches 

 deeply scarred with the hieroglyphics of visitors, curi- 

 ously crude, like Indian picture-writing, interwoven 

 with the Initials. In our boyhood enthusiasm, however, 

 we did not restrict ourselves to beeches, nor even to 

 trees, but our names were cut upon every available 

 object around the farm — the well curb, trough, the tim- 

 bers in the barn, the door, the beams, the feed-box, the 



