ARBOR DA V MAN DAL. 
21 I 
A NEW HOLIDAY. 
NEW holiday is a boon to Americans, and this year the month of May gave 
n a new holiday to the State of New York. It has been already observed 
elsewhere. It began, indeed, in Nebraska seventeen years ago, and thirty-four 
States and two Territories have preceded New York in adopting it. If the name 
6f Arbor Day may seem to be a little misleading, because the word “arbor,’ 
which meant a tree to the Romans, means a bower to Americans, yet it may well 
serve until a better name is suggested, and its significance by general under¬ 
standing will soon be as plain as Decoration Day. 
The holiday has been happily associated in this State especially with the 
public schools. This is most fitting, because the public school is the true and 
universal symbol of the equal rights of all citizens before the law, and of the 
fact that educated intelligence is ihc basis of good popular government. The 
more generous the cultivation of the mind, and the wider the range of knowl¬ 
edge, the more secure is the great national commonwealth. The intimate asso¬ 
ciation of the schools with tree-planting is fortunate in attracting boys and 
girls to a love and knowledge of nature, and to a respect for trees because of 
their value to the whole communit}. 
The scheme for the inauguration of the holiday in New York was issued by 
the Superintendent of Public Instruction. It proyided for simple and proper 
exercises, the recitation of brief passages from English literature relating to 
trees, songs about trees sung by the children, addresses, and planting of trees, 
to be named for distinguished persons of every kind. 
The texts for such addresses are indeed as numerous as the trees, and there 
may be an endless improvement of the occasion, to the pleasure and the profit 
of the scholars. They may be reminded that our knowledge of trees begins at 
a very early age, even their own, and that it usually begins with a close and 
thorough knowledge of the birch. 
This, indeed, might be called the earliest service of the tree to the child, if 
we did not recall the cradle and the crib. The child rocking in the cradle is the 
baby rocking in the treevtop, and as the child hears the nurse droning her 
drowsy rock-a-bye, baby, ^it may imagine that it hears the wind sighing through 
the branches of the tree. To identify the tree with human life and to give the 
pupil a personal interest in it will make the public school nurseries of sound 
opinion which will prevent the ruthless destruction of the forests. 
The service of the trees to us begins with the cradle and ends with the coffin. 
But it continues through our lives, and is of almost unimaginable extent and 
variety. In this country our houses and their furniture and the fences that 
inclose them are largely the product of the trees. The fuel that warms them, 
even if it be coal, is the mineralized wood of past ages. The frames and handles 
of agricultural implements, wharves, boats, ships. India-rubber, gums, bark, 
cork, carriages and railroad cars and ties—wherever the eye falls it sees the 
beneficent service of the trees. Arbor Day recalls this direct service on every 
hand, and reminds us of the indirect ministry of trees as guardians of the 
sources of rivers—the great forests making the densely shaded hills, covered 
