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ARBOR DA Y MANUAL. 
A DISCOURSE ON TREES. 
0 the great tree-loving fraternity we belong. We love trees with uni- 
1 versal and unfeigned love, and all things that do grow under them, or 
around them — “the whole leaf and root tribe.” Not alone where they are in 
their glory, but in whatever state they are — in leaf, or ruined with frost, or 
powdered with snow, or crystal-sheathed in ice, or in severe outline stripped 
and bare against a November sky — we love them. Our heart warms at the 
sight of even a board or a log. A lumber yard is better than nothing. The 
smell of wood, at least, is there, the savory fragrance of resin, as sweet as 
myrrh and frankincense ever was to a Jew. If we can get nothing better, we 
love to read over the names of trees in a catalogue. Many an hour have we 
sat at night, when after exciting work, we needed to be quieted, and read nur- 
serymen’s catalogues, and London’s Encyclopedias, and Arboretum, until the 
smell of the woods exhaled from the page, and the sound of leaves was in our 
ears, and sylvan glades opened to our eyes that would have made old Chaucer 
laugh and indite a rapturous rush of lines. 
But how much more do we love trees in all their summer pomp and pleni¬ 
tude. Not for their names and affinities, not for their secret physiology, and as 
material for science, not for any reason that we can give, except that when 
with them we are happy. The eye is full, the ear is full, the whole sense and 
all the tastes solaced, and our whole nature rejoices with that various and full 
happiness which one has when the soul is suspended in the midst of Beetho¬ 
ven’s symphonies and is lifted hither and thither, as if blown by sweet sounds 
through the airy passage of a full heavenly dream.. 
Our first excursion in Lenox was one of salutation to our notable trees. We 
had a nervous anxiety to see that the axe had not hewn, nor the lightning 
struck them; that no worm had gnawed at the root, or cattle at the trunk; 
that their branches were not broken, nor their leaves failing from drought. We 
found them all standing in their uprightness. They lifted up their heads 
towards heaven, and sent down to us from all their boughs a leafy whisper of 
recognition and affection. Blessed be the dew that cools their evening leaves, 
and the rains that quench their daily thirst! May the storm be as merciful to 
them when in winter it roars through their branches, as is a harper to his harp ! 
Let the snow lie lightly on their boughs, and long hence be the summer that 
shall find no leaves to clothe these nobles of the pasture ! 
First in our regard, as it is in the whole nobility of trees, stands the white 
elm, no less esteemed because it is an American tree, known abroad only by 
importation, and never seen in all its magnificence, except in our own valleys. 
The old oaks of England are very excellent in their way, gnarled and rugged. 
The elm has strength as significant as they, and a grace, a royalty, that leaves 
the oak like a boor in comparison. Had the elm been an English tree, and 
had Chaucer seen and loved and sung it; had Shakespeare and every English 
poet hung some garlands upon it, it would have lifted up its head now, not only 
the noblest of all growing things, but enshrined in a thousand rich associations 
of history and literature. 
