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ARBOR DA Y MANUAL. 
sweet and generous nature to have this strong relish for the beauties of vegetation, and 
this friendship for the hardy and glorious sons of the forest. There is a grandeur of 
thought connected with this part of rural economy. It is worthy of liberal and free-born 
and aspiring men. He who plants an oak looks forward to future ages, and plants for 
posterity. Nothing can be less selfish than this. He cannot expect to sit in its shade 
nor enjoy its shelter ; but he exults in the idea that the acogn which he has buried in the 
earth shall grow up into a lofty pile, and shall keep on flourishing and increasing and 
benefiting mankind long after he shall have ceased to tread his paternal fields.” 
White Oak.—We will hear what O. W. Holmes says on this subject. 
Tamarack (Elias).—Dr. O. W. Holmes says: “ I have written many verses, but the- 
best poems I have produced are the trees I planted on the hill-side which overlooks the 
broad meadows, scalloped and rounded at their edges by loops of the sinuous Housa- 
tonic. Nature finds rhymes for them in the recurring measures of the seasons. Winter 
strips them of their ornaments and gives them, as it were, in prose translation, and sum¬ 
mer reclothes them in all the splendid phrases of their leafy language. 
“ What are these maples and beeches and birches but odes and idyls and madrigals ?' 
What are these pines and firs and spruces but holy rhymes, too solemn for the many-hued 
raiment of their gay deciduous neighbors? 
“As you drop the seed, as you plant the sapling, your left hand hardly knows what 
your right hand is doing. But nature knows, and in due time the power that sees and: 
works in secret will reward you openly.” 
White Oak.—This concludes what we had on the program for this convention. 
Hemlock.—I move we have some more music and then adjourn. 
White Oak.—If there be no objections we shall have the music. 
White Oak.—This convention stands adjourned until again convened by the proper 
authorities. 
Written for the “ Arbor Day Manual.” 
PLANT THE OAK. 
C OME plant the Oak, the grand old Oak, 
England’s ancestral tree ! 
They call her sailors “ hearts of oak,” 
For bravery on the sea. 
America, the rebel child, 
Outgrown the Mother’s hand, 
May call her soldiers “hearts of oak,” 
For bravery on the land. 
Sout/i Sodus, N. Y. 
Her flag is known in every land, 
Her ships plow every sea ; 
She pays no tribute, holds no slaves, 
Her children all are free. 
Then plant the Oak, the brave young Oak 1. 
’Twill thrive in freedom’s clime 
And spread its greenest banners out 
To the breeze in glad spring-time. 
Mrs. Addie V. McMullex.. 
FORGET-ME-NOT. 
W HEN to the flowers so beautiful 
The Father gave a name, 
Back came a little blue-eyed one 
(All timidly it came;) 
And standing at its Father’s feet 
And gazing in His face 
It said, in low and trembling tonesr 
“ Dear God, the name thou gavest mey. 
Alas ! I have forgot,” 
Kindly the Father looked him down' 
And said: “Forget-me-not.” 
I know not which I love the most, The pansy in her purple dress, 
Nor which the comeliest shows. The pink with cheek of red, 
The timid, bashful violet, Or the faint fair heliotrope, who hangs^ 
Or the royal hearted rose : Like a bashful maid, her head; 
For I love and prize you one and all, 
From the least low bloom of spring 
To the lily fair, whose clothes outshine 
The raiment of a king. 
Phcebe Cary- 
