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“Darlings of the forest! 
Blossoming alone! 
When Earth’s grief is sorest 
For her jewels gone— 
Ere the last snow-drift melts, your tender buds have blown.” 
—Rose T. Coolce. 
Ash- A mef icar%. 
“A stately tree, 
With white dust, strewed.” 
— Anon. 
One of the most dignified denizens of the American forest is the 
Ash, rising to a height of from thirty to forty feet without branching and 
then crowning itself with large, dense and handsome foliage to an extent 
fully equal to the growth of its stately trunk. Its timber is elastic, light, 
tough and durable, and is much used by ship-builders. 
Greatness—Grandeur. 
S HO is great? Who is the greatest? “The greatest man,” says a 
truthful noble writer, “is he who chooses the right with invincible 
resolution, who resists the sorest temptations from within and without, 
who bears the heaviest burdens cheerfully, who is calmest in storms and 
most fearless under menace and frowns, and whose reliance on truth, on 
virtue , on God, is most unfaltering.” 
The great man is sincere. 
The great man is simple, for as the greatest truths are the simplest, 
so are the greatest men. 
