ooms,
And merrily sway the beeches;
Breathe delicately the willow blooms,
And the pines rehearse new speeches;
The elms toss high till they reach the sky,
Pale catkins the yellow birch launches,
But the tree I love all the greenwood above
Is the maple of sunny branches.

Let who will sing of the hawthorn in spring,
Or the late-leaved linden in summer;
There's a word may be for the locust tree,
That delicate, strange new-comer;
But the maple it glows with the tint of the rose
When pale are the spring-time regions,
And its towers of flame from afar proclaim
The advance of Winter's legions.

And a greener shade there never was made
Than its summer canopy sifted,
And many a day, as beneath it I lay,
Has my memory backward drifted
To a pleasant lane I may walk not again,
Leading over a fresh, green hill,
Where a maple stood just clear of the wood--
And oh! to be near it still!

Charles G. D. Roberts

THE GREENWOOD TREE

Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me,
And tune his merry note
Unto the sweet bird's throat,
Come hither, come hither, come hither;
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.

Who doth ambition shun
And loves to live i' the sun;
Seeking the food he eats,
And pleased with what he gets,
Come hither, come hither, come hither;
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.

Shakespeare

Believe me, thrift of time will repay you in after life with a usury of
profit beyond your most sanguine dreams, and the waste of it will make
you dwindle, alike in intellectual and moral stature, beyond your
darkest reckonings.

Gladstone

LAKE SUPERIOR

Before turning our steps westward from this inland ocean, Lake Superior,
it will be well to pause a moment on its shore and look out over its
bosom. It is worth looking at, for the world possesses not its equal.
Four hundred English miles in length, one hundred and fifty miles in
breadth, six hundred feet above Atlantic level, nine hundred feet in
depth; one vast spring of purest crystal water, so cold that during
summer months its waters are like ice itself, and so clear that hundreds
of feet below the surface the rocks stand out as distinctly as though
seen through p