On each life path, like costly flowers faded

And cast away, are pleasures that are dead; Good deeds, like trees, whereunder, fed and shaded, Souls yet unborn may tread.

WOOD*

BY JULIA ROGERS

TREES grow, therefore wood is cheaper than metals. It is easily worked with tools into desired shapes and sizes. It is held securely by nails and by glue. It is practically permanent when protected by paint; under water or in the ground it outlasts metal. Its strength and lightness adapt it to various uses. Its lightness makes it easy to handle. It preserves the flavor of wines as no other material can do. It is a non-conductor of heat and electricity. Many woods are marked by patterns of infinite variety and beauty, whose very irregularities constitute an abiding charm. To this is added a fine blending of colors and a lustre when polished that give woods a place in the decorative arts that can be taken by no other substance.

THE HOLLY-TREE

BY ROBERT SOUTHEY

O READER! hast thou ever stood to see
The Holly-tree?

*From "The Tree Book," Doubleday, Page & Co.

The eye that contemplates it will perceive
Its glossy leaves,

Ordered by an intelligence so wise

As might confound the Atheist's sophistries.

Below, a circling fence, its leaves are seen,
Wrinkled and keen;

No grazing cattle through their prickly round
Can reach to wound;

But, as they grow where nothing is to fear, Smooth and unarmed the pointless leaves appear.

I love to view these things with curious eyes,
And moralize;

And in this wisdom of the Holly-tree
Can emblem see

Wherewith, perchance, to make a pleasant rhyme,
One which may profit in the after-time.

Thus, though abroad perchance I might appear
Harsh and austere,

To those who on my leisure would intrude
Reserved and rude,

Gentle at home amid my friends I'd be,
Like the high leaves upon the Holly-tree.

And should my youth, as youth is apt I know,
Somehow a harshness show,

All vain asperities I day by day

Would wear away,

Till the smooth temper of my age should be
Like the high leaves upon the Holly-tree.

And as, when all the summer trees are seen
So bright and green,

The Holly-leaves a sober hue display
Less bright than they,

But when the bare and wintry woods we see,
What then so cheerful as the Holly-tree?

So serious should my youth appear among
The thoughtless throng;

So would I seem, amid the young and gay,
More grave than they,

That in my age as cheerful I might be
As the green winter of the Holly-tree.

A DISCOURSE ON TREES

BY HENRY WARD BEECHER

To the great tree-loving fraternity we belong. We love trees with universal 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 nurserymen'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 plenitude. 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 Beethoven'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 toward 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.