ARBOR DA Y MANUAL. 
3 2I 
TREES. 
REES are indeed the glory, the beauty, and the delight of nature. * * * 
1 In what one imaginable attribute, that it ought to possess, is a tree, pray, 
deficient? Light, shade, shelter, coolness, freshness, music, all the colors of 
the rainbow, dew and dreams dropping through their umbrageous twilight at 
■eve or morn, dropping direct, soft, sweet, soothing, and restorative, from 
heaven. * * * 
We love you all! And love you all we shall, while our dim eyes can catch 
the glimmer, our dull ears the murmur, of the leaves, or our imagination hear, 
at midnight, the far-off swing of old branches groaning in the tempest. * * * 
Not that we hold it to be a matter of pure indifference how people plant 
trees. We have an eye for the picturesque, the sublime, and the beautiful, and 
^cannot open it without seeing at once the very spirit of the scene. O, ye who 
have had the happiness to be born among the murmurs of hereditary trees! 
Can ye be blind to the system pursued by that planter — Nature ? Nature 
plants often on a great scale, darkening, far as the telescope can command the 
umbrage, sides of mountains that are heard roaring still with hundreds of 
hidden cataracts. And Nature often plants on a small scale, dropping down 
the stately birk so beautiful, among the sprinkled hazels, by the side of the 
little waterfall of the wimpling burnie, that stands disheveling there her 
tresses to the dew-wind, like a queen’s daughter, who hath just issued from a 
pool 01 pearls and shines aloft and aloof from her attendant maidens. 
But man is so proud of his own works that he ceases to regard those of 
Nature. Why keep poring on that book of plates, purchased at less than half 
price at a sale, when Nature flutters before your eves her own folio, which all 
who run may read; although to study it as it ought to be studied, you must 
certainly sit down on mossy stump, ledge of an old bridge, stone-wall, stream- 
bank, or broomy brae, and gaze, and gaze, and gaze, till woods and sky become 
like your very self, and your very self like them, at once incorporated together 
and spiritualized. After a few years’ such lessons you may become a planter ; 
and under your hands not only shall the desert blossom like the rose, but 
murmur like the palm, and if “southward through Eden goes a river large,” 
and your name be Adam, what a sceptic not to believe yourself the first of 
men, your wife the fairest of her daughters Eve, and your policy Paradise ! 
Professor Wilson. 
Let dead names be eternized by dead stone, 
Whose substance time cannot increase nor mar ; 
Let living names by living shafts be known, 
That feel the influence of sun and star. 
Plant thou a tree, whose griefless leaves shall sing 
Thy deed and thee, each fresh unfolding spring. 
Edith M. Thomas. 
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