DECIDUOUS TREES. 
317 
of a circle till they bend at maturity almost to the earth with their 
verdant tips. 
That master of happy characterization, the Rev. Henry Ward 
Beecher, in “ Norwood,’’ makes the following beautiful allusions to 
the weeping elm ‘ — “ No town can fail of beauty, though its walks 
were gutters, and its houses hovels, if venerable trees make mag- 
nificent colonnades along its streets. Of all trees, no other unites, 
in the same degree, majesty and beauty, grace and grandeur, as the 
American elm. Known from north to south, through a range of 
twelve hundred miles, and from the Atlantic to the head-waters 
which flow into the western side of the Mississippi, yet, in New 
England the elm is found in its greatest size and beauty, fully justi- 
fying Michaux’ commendation of it to European cultivators, as ‘ the 
most magnificent vegetable of the temperate zone.’ ” * * # 
“ Their towering trunks, whose massiveness well symbolizes Puri- 
tan inflexibility ; their overarching tops, facile, wind-borne and 
elastic, hint the endless plasticity and adaptableness of this people j 
and both united, form a type of all true manhood, broad at the 
root, firm in the trunk, and yielding at the top, yet returning again 
after every impulse into position and symmetry. What if they 
were sheered away from village and farm-house? Who would 
know the land? Farm-houses that now stop the tourist and the 
artist, would stand forth bare and homely ; and villages that 
coquette with beauty through green leaves, would shine white and 
ghastly as sepulchres. Let any one imagine Conway or Lancaster 
without elms ! Or Hadley, Hatfield, Northampton, or Springfield ! 
New Haven without elms would be like Jupiter without a beard, or 
a lion shaved of his mane ! ” 
The weeping elm grows with great rapidity, and where uninjured 
by insects, or lack of moisture in the soil, is picturesque and beau- 
tiful in every stage of its growth. No other tree, when young, 
throws out its arms so free and wild, and assumes so great a variety 
of forms. Figs. 63 and 76 are two sketches from nature of 
young weeping elms, illustrative of this characteristic. Very fine 
specimens of this elm may be seen at the west, which have attained 
a majestic height in the forest, and then had their environing trees 
gradually cut from around them. At first they are little more than 
