around us; and one of the things that engages me just
now, is to prepare a discourse to be delivered under our Elm Tree on the
21st.

The Elm Tree Association, before which the address just alluded to was
made, was a Village Improvement Society, of which my father was [240]
one of the founders, and which took its name from an immense tree, one
of the finest in Massachusetts, standing near the house of his maternal
grandfather. To smooth and adorn the ground around the Great Elm, and
make it the scene of a yearly summer festival for the whole town, was
the first object of the Society, extending afterwards to planting trees,
grading walks, etc., through the whole neighborhood; and it was one
of the earlier impulses to that refinement of taste which has made of
Sheffield one of the prettiest villages in the country. With its
fine avenue of elms, planted nearly forty years ago, its gardens and
well-shaven turf, it shows what care and a prevailing love of beauty
and order will do for a place where there is very little wealth. It was
about this time that my father planted in an angle of the main street
the Seven Pines, which now make, as it were, an evergreen chapel to his
memory, and with the proceeds of some lectures that he gave in the town,
set out a number of deciduous trees around the Academy, many of which
are still living, though the building they were intended to shade is
gone.

The Elm Tree Association, however, from one cause and another, was
short-lived; but "It lived to light a steadier flame" in the Laurel Hill
Association, of Stockbridge, which, taking the idea from the Sheffield
plan, continues to develop it in a very beautiful and admirable manner.
[241] The address at the gathering in 1856 was chiefly occupied with a
review of the history of the town, and with the thoughts appropriate
to the place of meeting; and at the close the speaker took occasion to
explain to his townspeople his ideas upon the national crisis of the
day, and the changed aspect that had been given to the slavery question
by the fresh determination of the South to maintain the excellence of
the system and to force it upon the acceptance of the North in the new
States then forming. Against this he made earnest and solemn protest,
with a full expression of his opinion as to the innate wrong to the
blacks, and the destructive effects on the whites, of slavery; but
at the same time he spoke with large and kindly consideration for the
South