ARBOR DA Y MANUAL. 
373. 
SPECIMEN PROGRAMS. 
Port Henry, N. Y. 
Arranged by Professor W. H Benedict,' now of the public schools of Elmira, N. Y., for Arbor Day,, 
May 3, 1889. 
Selections marked thus * are given in this volume. 
PROGRAM. 
1. Chorus.—■*“ Hymn in Praise of the Natural World.” High School, 
"The singing was accompanied by an organ and two violins. 
2. Reading of letters from distinguished persons, by members of the High School. 
From Hon. J. Sterling Morton, ex-Governor of Nebraska, and the author of Arbor 
©ay. 
Arbor Lodge, Nebraska City, Neb., April 20, 1889. 
Dear Sir — All other anniversaries refer to the past and its dead. Arbor Day alone 
deals with the present and the future. It stretches its sheltering shades over the unborn 
millions of coming generations and in the voices of the leafy woods pronounces benedic¬ 
tions upon posterity. Faithfully yours, 
J. Sterling Morton. 
From George William Curtis, Vice-Chancellor of the University of the State of New 
York. 
West New Brighton, Staten Island, April 17, 1889. 
Dear Sir — I am very glad that you propose fitting observance of Arbor Day, which I 
think may be easily made one of the most interesting of our holidays. There is proba¬ 
bly not one of the pupils in your school who has not a fondness for pet animals, for 
horses, dogs, cats, squirrels, rabbits, and the charm lies largely in its life and its depend¬ 
ence upon its master. Arbor Day will enlarge this friendly relation, so as to include 
trees, and by and by, perhaps, shrubs and flowering plants. They too are living, and for 
their proper growth and development they will depend largely upon the care and intelli¬ 
gence of the boys and girls who are interested in them. 
This interest will be fostered as in the case of the pet animals by the individual relation 
between the trees and those who plant them. It will be stimulated by the names to be 
given to the trees, and by the desire to honor distinguished men and women by carefully 
tending the trees that bear their names. All this will gradually lead inevitably to special 
knowledge of the structure, character, growth, and uses of trees, to enjoyment of the 
allusions to them in literature, and their association with historical events, like the Char¬ 
ter Oak in ‘Hartford and Sir Philip Sidney’s oak at Penshurst, which was planted at his 
birth and which Ben. Johnson and Edmund Waller commemorated, and the Abbot’s oak,, 
; and William the Conqueror’s oak at Windsor Park. 
With this will come a keener interest in the significance of trees and plants in national] 
usages, andin popular belief and proverbs, “ There’s rosemary, that’s remembrance.” To, 
“be clad in mourning was to wear the Willow. Old Fuller, the English worthy, call$u}ie 
willow a sad tree, and the forsaken lover sahg “ all around my hat I wear a green willow,” 
The Jews in captivity hung their harps upon the willows, and to describe a melancholy 
landscape Sir Walter Scott in the Lay of the Last Minstrel sings of “ along the wildapd. 
willowed shore.” It was upon the Beech tree that lovers, long before America, was dis¬ 
covered, carved the names of their sweethearts, and it was upon the tree of whichjAmiens, 
sung that Shakespeare’s Orlando hung his verses to Rosalind. It was the tree^oft Arden¬ 
nes that waved their leaves over the soldiers marching to Waterloo, “Grieving, if-aught* 
inanimate e’er grieves over the unreturning brave.” Thus in'every way tree§>%re inwrought* 
with literature as with art. 
“The groves were God’s first temples,” and Gothic architecture re^qduces the long 
-drawn aisles and fretted vault of the pine forest. 
As the student advances into Latin and Greek, he will find trees springing up all’a,tp.und 
him in the form of allusions in the chaplets, wreaths and crowns, that were woven from 
their leaves, although they do not appear in the classic poets ?s, figures of beauty jn the 
