The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-09-27
LrTCHEIELD AND ITS TREES.
How n Disastrous storm Proved Provi-
 ucntkNI.
LltchlleId, sept. 24, 189S.

The way some people talk, you would imagine that the beauty of Litchfeld consisted in tree-tops, and that having lost few tree-tops Litchfield had lost its beauty. What nonsense! Last winter Litchfield had an ice storm that broke the record, and incidentally broke a few tree-tops. The storm was a magnificent one. The fame thereof went forth to the ends of the earth. Ever since meteorologists from every cline and country have been hurrying to Litohfield to investigate statistics, to study the records of the phenomena and to carry back to their respective governments information which may be of value in the future. Walking up and down North street, you would irn- agine you were in modern Bable. Polyglotism is rampant. Frenchmen, Germans, Russians, Italians and even Spaniards are climbing up and down trees like well dressed monkeys, meas uring branches, Investigating fractures and locating points and direction of in tensest pressure. The town has had the animation and the sparkle of all the watering places of Europe com bined No twig, not even a Litchfleld twig, can stand a pressure of four pounds to the inch. That, our friends from outre mer have decided, was the average weight of the congelation. That single stump should be stand ing anywheres within the radius of the storm is another proof of the superb vital strength that Litchfield air and Lltchfield soil put into it's trees as well as into it's men and women. Branches are composed of twigs and trees of branches. So when twigs go branches must go too, and when branches go some trees are sure to follow. But there are plenty of trees standing with sufficiency of branches, and the branches have been twigging away so merrily all summer that foliage is as lovely as ever. Still it is evident that Litchfield is not as heavily timbered as it was, and it is equally evident that the change is greatly to Litchffeld's ad- vantage.
 In the first place there is such thing as having too much of good thing. Foliage is a good thing up to a certain nir,t lat oi1,f ie sance and danger. Years and years ago a very delightful lady who was born in New Haven and should have lived there, refused to live there be- cause, as she said, "Only toad and a toad-stool flourish under tree and I am neither the one nor the other' phatical1y declared that trees are mans enemy, and that the white race is the only race that has conquered the ene- my. Having conquered, the white man should keep the enemy under. That in many New England cities and in most New England villages there are too
 
 and happiness of inhabitants, but also
 the beauty and productiveness of individual trees is as true as the most orthodox preaching. An elm tree with plenty of space about 1t and uninter- rppted sunshine may grow to be one of the loveliest objects upon which the eye +l, ation and the love which accompanies the beauty. But elm trees close to- gether in rows, as they are in the streets of New Haven, spindling up like telegraph poles, each one trying to out grow it's neighbor so as to get bit aof sunshine on top, are as ugly as they were intended to be beautiful While the opaque foliage above keeps away the sunshine from the houses of the fe- ver-stricken inmates and covers the whole city with a cloud of inertia, dys- pepsia, political apathy and religious gt,om.
 This fate threatened Litchfield. Il must not be supposed that Litchfield did not know what was coming and was not considering the matter. That would not have been Ltcafield How measures for the general good can be made acceptable to the individual is a problem that has always occupied the attention of Litchfield politico-econo- mists. If the burgesses had decreed that a certain number of trees must come down, the question of whose trees would have been lively. To have drawn the dividing line between repub- lican trees and democratic trees, or be- tween the trees of church members and those of stay-at-homers would have made the question acute. TO equalize would have been difficult and unpopu- lar for poor mans single tree may be of more intrinsic value than his rich neighbours superfiuous dozens A cal for patriotic tree-sacrifice was consid- cred The situation was becoming in- tense, especially when it was consid. cred that Litchfield did not take the in itiative some other town might, and thus wrest from Litchfield the leader ship of New England. Can any one wonder now that pious Litchfielders re- gard the ice storm of last winter as 8 direct intervention of Providence, as a