et is that I have never been in a position to do so. I can say,
though, with Dr. Holmes, for whose opinion on such things I have a most
profound admiration, that I have an intense, passionate fondness for all
trees in general and for certain trees in particular. When I go out
among the trees I have a kinship there. I am never lonely when I am in a
forest and I cannot say that when I am alone in a big city. I like to
look upon an old tree as a patriarch with not only an honored past but
an interesting story locked up under its bark. As I go to such a place
as Valley Forge, I like to lay my hand on the rough bark of an old tree
and say, "Oh, but that you might tell your tale; you are the only thing
left which looked upon the scene in which a few were crucified that many
might live." Such are the thoughts that come to me when I stand by an
old tree. I like to let my mind run back to the beginnings of trees, to
the pre-historic times when this bed rock was laid down, when all this
region was an inlet or bay from the Atlantic Ocean and the upland was
treeless as our rock record shows. Then there were the beginnings of low
fern-like growth and clotted mass which gradually increased in size
until they assumed the enormous proportions which made the coal beds
possible. And then I like to follow the growth of trees on to the broad
leaf. We have the beginnings of the broad leaf, the sassafras, the
poplars, the maples, and the oaks, and then, as the crowning feature of
the evolutionary process, the nut tree. I like to let my mind run ahead
a bit, particularly at such a time as this when we are setting out new
trees. What sort of people will these trees live to see? Will there be a
decadence of the taste and fondness for trees, which we hope is
growing? Will these trees live to see a race of people who take no
interest in such things except a commercial one, who have no thought for
the beauty of the trees nor for the rights of posterity? Will these
trees perchance live to see an upheaval of the happy affairs which now
exist in this country? In one hundred and fifty years many things can
happen. There is much in the existing turmoil of war conditions that
suggests possible disaster within the next couple of centuries, and
possibly that the fair constitution of Franklin and Washington may be
submerged in a chaos of something that means nothing. The remote
possibility of the invasion of a conquering race to destroy all these
things--but