of My
Own Acre."

At the point where the party is drinking tea (the site of the Indian
mound) the overlap of grove and lawn is eighty-five feet across the old
fence line that once sharply divided them.]

Young senators among their seniors, they still have much growth to make
before they can enter into their full forest dignity, yet Henry Ward
Beecher's elm is nearly two feet through and has a spread of fifty; Max
O'Rell's white-ash is a foot in diameter and fifty feet high; Edward
Atkinson's is something more, and Felix Adler's hemlock-spruce, the
maple of Anthony Hope Hawkins, L. Clark Seelye's English ash, Henry van
Dyke's white-ash, Sol Smith Russell's linden, and Hamilton Wright
Mabie's horse-chestnut are all about thirty-five feet high and cast a
goodly shade. Sir James M. Barrie's elm--his and Sir William Robertson
Nicoll's, who planted it with him later than the plantings
aforementioned--has, by some virtue in the soil or in its own energies,
reached a height of nearly sixty-five feet and a diameter of sixteen
inches. Other souvenirs are a horse-chestnut planted by Minnie Maddern
Fiske, a ginkgo by Alice Freeman Palmer, a beech by Paul van Dyke, a
horse-chestnut by Anna Hempstead Branch, another by Sir Sidney Lee, yet
another by Mary E. Burt, a catalpa by Madelaine Wynne, a Colorado blue
spruce--fitly placed after much labor of mind--by Sir Moses Ezekiel, and
a Kentucky coffee-tree by Gerald Stanley Lee and Jennette Lee, of our
own town. Among these should also stand the maple of Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle, but it was killed in its second winter by an undetected mouse at
its roots. Except Sir Moses, all the knights here named received the
accolade after their tree plantings, but I draw no moral.

[Illustration: "Souvenir trees had from time to time been planted on the
lawn by visiting friends."

The Beecher elm, first of the souvenir trees.]

Would it were practicable to transmit to those who may know these trees
in later days the scenes of their setting out and to tell just how the
words were said which some of the planters spoke. Mr. Beecher, lover of
young trees and young children, straightened up after pressing the soil
about the roots with hands as well as feet and said: "I cannot wish you
to live as long as this tree, but may your children's children and
their children sit under its shade." Said Felix Adler to his
hemlock-spruce, "Vivat, crescat, floreat"; and a sentiment much like it
was implied in Sol S