The Sauk Centre herald. (Sauk Centre, Stearns County, Minn.) 1886-current, 1906-04-12
A POEM IN PROSE
IS GOVERNOR JOHNSOES ARBOR DAY PROClAMA
ton

pleasure as governor of Minnesota. to
set aside Friday, April q, as Arbor
and Bird Day, and to ask that our
citizens, rural, urban and suburban,
consecrate it In whole or in part to the
cleansing, restoring and identifying
OF our fair domain. Cleansing and
restoration are the debt of the present
to the past; Identification is its debt
to the future. What our fathers wooed
from nature, or wrested from the hand
OF the red man or the paw of the bear,
let us be able, unshamed, to hand over
when the days of our pilgrimage are
ended, not in condition excusable per-
haps to tenants, but in such as be-
comes the owners of property entailed.
Holding with regard to the water
system OF the continent the position
OF the heart to the human body, Min
nesota has unrivaled opportunities
Tor agriculture, splendid naturaliacili-
ties for manufacture, of which she
has not been slow to avail herself.
But, as is only to be expected in DAYS
so close to pioneering, she has not
yet awakened to sense of the aesthet-
ic value of ten thousand lakes, her
forest and field endowment. With
the prodigality of the new rich, she
has already squandered large part
OF her goodly heritage, but now, with
more time at her disposal, she has
begun to study natures economics,
to learn how to husband her still en-
vlable fortune placing it beyond the
reach of financial panic or NAV of
syndicate. That hitherto she was but
thoughtless not merely greedy and
rapacious her parks in Itasca and at
the Dalles of the St. Croix do testify.
sit is with feeling of keen regret
one realizes that because of the ruth
less vandalism of him who covets but
to destroy our state flower, as POLITICALLY
linked with our past and with our
World-famed falls as is the may-fower
with the landing of the Puritans APP
pears more and more rarely in its old
time haunts. Too soon it may be that
this shoelet, SO quantity beautiful,
dropped by the dusky Cinderella of the
woods In her flight before the dawn,
may be seen only in the foriated
columns OF the capitol. The protective
instinct in man has been so developed
OF recent years as to have secured rela-
tive immunity to his neighbors in fur
and feathers. May not it be still fur
ther developed to safeguard life that is
even more defenseless in its appeal?
"While it seems advisable to suggest
that the exercises in the schoolroom
on this day tend more particularly to
engender spirit of loving understand
ing restraint towards flower and shrub
and tree, it is not the intention to over
look the obvious duties of so doing,
planting and pruning that devolve up
on the individual and the community;
but these are matters that more obtru-
sively force themselves on the atten.
ton, and the danger that they will
be neglected is slight.
"Since this proclamation can be only
general and suggestive, it is left to the
home and especially to the school, to
make the day memorable to youth for
the definiteness, earnestness and force
of the lessons in this regard. 1t may
be that Scotland's bard in Scotland's
fields did not pillow so straight furrow
by turning aside for hapless mountain
daisy, but his verse has furrowed it's
way straight to the heart of the whole
civilized world; and in thus turning
aside from our daily routine work to
cherish these sweet dependents On our
care, are we not but serving our own
best interests and Frightening the lane
that has no turning"