the bread for his household must grow, is of course a work of necessity. But a far-reaching mind will spare here and there, the time-honored tree, to protect the future mansion from the rays of the noon-day sun.
The wild elephant, when death approaches, moves slowly to seek the shadow of lofty trees, and there resigns his breath. Intelligent man, like the most sagacious of animals, might surely spare a few, as a shelter for his weary head, and a patrimony for an unborn race. He might save, here and there, one solitary witness to His goodness, who causeth those glorious columns of verdure to rise nearer and nearer to His heaven, while the heads of so many generations of men descend to the dust from whence they were at first taken.
It seems almost a wickedness, wantonly to smite down a vigorous, healthful tree. It was of God's planting, in its veins are circulating the life which He has given. Its green and mighty arch is full of his beauty and power. It has borne winter and tempest without repining. Spring has duly remembered to awaken it from adversity, and to whisper that the "time of the singing of birds hath come." War may have swept away armies, revolution overturned thrones, time engulphed whole races of men, but there it stood unmoved, unfaded, a chronicler of history, a benefactor to the traveller, a monument of the goodness of the Almighty.
Were our new settlers more frequently men of taste,