The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-10-20
SHADE TREES.

There ID general movement throughout
the East not only for the preservation of
the forests from wanton destruction but
for the multiplication of handsome shade
trees along country roads and in the SUBJ
urban streets Of cities, towns and villages.
The sight Of lofty trees, blessing with
their stately beauty and grateful shade q
rural landscape is more welcome to the
mass Of people who wrestie with the world
from early youth to the grave than the
sight or speech Of many great men, for
great men charm chiefly from their printed
or spoken thoughts or their beneficent
deeds. Personal contact with famous men
is often disagreeable and seldom enjoy
able, so distinct is the physical impress
SION produced by looks or manners from
the intellectual impact of ideas poured
into printed book or speech; painted
into picture, or carved into q statue.
The book is sometimes better than the
author; the speech better than the orator;
the art better than the artist; the music
sweeter or grander than the composer.
The man Dickens was neither lovable in
temper and manners nor lovely In His
domestic morals; the great artist Turner
was miser, a satyr and q drunkard, Of
fensive to the point of obscenity; the great
composer Mozart was insanely dissolute
in his habits. But nobody, high or low,
can quarrel with great trees, however
querrulously they may express their disap-
pointment at the sight and conduct of
so-called great man. The tree has thou
sand tongues In its whispering leaves,
yet none Of them utters discordant note.
for they are all as finely attuned to har-
monious speech as the Eolian harp, whose
melodious cadences rise and fall under the
breath of the passing breeze.
The great tree, when its figure bends
and sways in the wind, has always a
graceful mien, which is more than can
be said of many great men in the rostrum,
The dress of the trees, whether in bud,
bloom, fruit or foliage, whether wearing
the bright green Of June or the hectic
hues of autumn or the austere majesty of
winter, Is never inharmonious or out of
season; it offends neither by its speech,
its port, its motion or its garb. It Is
approved by the poetic eye of the artist
or the severely mathematical and accurate
eye Of the engineer. The children love
its shade, as do the cattle. The states
man, the soldier, the artisan, the trader.
the farmer and the purposeless tramp are
all quick to look up and smile their salts
faction at the sight of noble tree, not
because they see in it ships and spars
and fuel, but because it is prime factor in
the beauty that relieves and softens
the stern or dull features of the earth's
cold face OF clay. The tree is like the
mighty sea that in its mirth, its wrath or
its calm, arrests the attention of high and
low by the majesty of its domain and the
variety of music that its vast, versatile and
flexible organ sounds along its shores.
Nobody ever grows captious IN criticism
at the sight of great forest or a vast sea.
for the voice, the motion, the music and
the color are all so harmonious that there
Is no fault or blemish 10 offend the critics
eye.
So the lesson Of q tree includes among
its various speech the fine, imaginative.
fhaNAc "PRNhA Va poCAhs AhC Otu
faith of the primitive Briton included a
reverence for the oak as enthusiastic as
that felt by the Persian fire worshipper for
the sun. The Englishman, the French
man and the German carefully guard
their trees from destruction, and Eng
land by act of parliament goes
80 far as TO protect the common wild prim-
rose, the great Lord Beaconsfield's favorite
flower. from wanton depreciation and de-
struction. It's hopeful sign of growing
refinement and ripeness in our American
people, when they are willing to protect
their beautiful woods and waters from de-
struction; when they begin to believe that
it viii not spoil their children for business
success to educate them TO spare the trees.
to cultivate and multiply them. Some
time Seattle will have fine shade trees. and
until il has them it viii lack something of
harmonious beauty; something of the best
outdoor education.
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Mormonism, girdled a. IL Is beginning