ize grief is because
charcoal made from its twigs and branches is an important and almost
essential ingredient of gunpowder, through which a sufficiency of grief
has undoubtedly entered the world!

Willow twigs seem the very essence of fragility, as they break from the
parent tree at a touch; and yet one of the willows furnishes the tough,
pliable and enduring withes from which are woven the baskets of the
world. The willows, usually thin in branch, sparse of somewhat pale
foliage, of so-called mournful mien, are yet bursting with vigor and
life; indeed, the spread and the value of the family is by reason of
this tenacity and virility, which makes a broken twig, floating on the
surface of a turbid stream, take root and grow on a sandy bank where
nothing else can maintain itself, wresting existence and drawing
strength and beauty from the very element whose ravages of flood and
current it bravely withstands.

Apparently ephemeral in wood, growing quickly and perishing as quickly,
the willows nevertheless supply us with an important preservative
element, extracted from their bitter juices. Salicylic acid, made from
willow bark, prevents change and arrests decay, and it is an important
medical agent as well.

[Illustration: A weeping willow in early spring]

Flexible and seemingly delicate as the little tree is when but just
established, there is small promise of the rugged and sturdy trunk that
in a few years may stand where the chance twig lodged. And the color of
the willows--ah! there's a point for full enthusiasm, for this family of
grief furnishes a cheerful note for every month in the year, and runs
the whole scale of greens, grays, yellows and browns, and even adds to
the winter landscape touches of blazing orange and bright red across the
snow. Before ever one has thought seriously of the coming of spring, the
long branchlets of the weeping willow have quickened into a hint of
lovely yellowish green, and those same branchlets will be holding their
green leaves against a wintry blast when most other trees have given up
their foliage under the frost's urgency. Often have the orange-yellow
twigs of the golden osier illumined a somber countryside for me as I
looked from the car window; and close by may be seen other willow bushes
of brown, green, gray, and even purple, to add to the color compensation
of the season. Then may come into the view, as one flies past, a great
old weeping willow rattling its bare twigs