Winter Trees—A Plea 
By HELEN CHURCHILL CANDLE 
T hose who have dreamed under Italian skies, 
long for Italian trees at home. Can we not 
have them Say if you like that I know 
nothing whatever of tree-growing. Who does, 
forsooth, except a few specialists, and these hold¬ 
ing mightily to traditionThe child cries for 
what he wants and it is his nurse’s business to 
see that he gets it, or else endure with dignity the 
childish flings and arrows. It is for the man who 
gardens to tell us that we shall have our desire for 
Italian trees. Palms and ilexes in Maine, no; but 
perhaps cypress and stone pine say, in Lakewood, 
New Jersey, or Richmond, or any place less bitter 
than New England in winter. 
If you think it is not worth while, Mr. Arboricul¬ 
ture, if you stand on the fact that we have trees to 
make Italy weep with envy in our maples, umbra¬ 
geous and brilliant, in our elms, which Godj sure 
made in a spirit of grandeur and grace; if you think 
it not worth while to grow Italy’s trees for us, then 
nothing will help you but to meander from Naples 
up to Rome, wriggling back and forth from town to 
town on the way to Llorence, striking the sea at Via- 
reggio and caroming off to Ravenna’s pineta on the 
other side, and finally reaching the rise of mountains 
north of Lombardy’s plain where nestle the lakes 
with their much sung villas. Then when the trees you 
have thus seen possess your soul, as they surely will, 
you will say, “They shall grow on our soil!” 
i If your journeying is in winter, the determination 
is but the stronger, for the trees that hold the heart 
in that land of delight are those which change not 
with the seasons. 
Leader of them all is the cypress, the tree that 
marches from end to end of Italy, that trails over 
steep hills like soldiers in single file, that stands 
amicably in straggling groups as though for familiar 
conversation, that forms an eager circle around a 
mirroring pool, or that stands a lonely guardian at a 
gate of entry. It is man’s ministrant and cares alike 
for the quick and for the dead. It nestles a garden 
seat, where beauty listens to tales of earnest decep¬ 
tion; or tenderly benign, makes less lonely the 
sacred graves of poets fallen by the way. 
The cypress tree is almost human in its conduct, 
and so worthy of human love. This love it gains at 
the first introduction, down in Naples where the ships 
land the modern of the New World and bring him 
to happy confusion, drenching him with wave after 
wave of varied sensation. He comes up gasping 
after seeing the miseries of poverty-ridden life in the 
dark cracks between masonry that serve as streets in 
town and city, and there stands the cypress pointing 
to God in heaven. He comes up gasping too, after 
the first waves of antiquity greet him—there stands 
the cypress firm and comfortable,a companion whose 
mood can be counted on. And when he first is dashed 
by the spray of that great wave which will drench 
his entire life—the Renaissance—it is the strong, calm 
cypress that holds him steady—it lived then, in that 
dazzling period for those brilliant men; it lives now, 
for the modern. 
To know the cypress it must be lived with—another 
human attribute. It is not to be made an acquain¬ 
tance by a glance as you pass along the road. It is no 
peasant, but a very aristocrat, with all prejudices 
toward dignity and reserve, and reveals moods only 
to tried friends. By discreetly regarding my cypress 
i6i 
