Evening capital and Maryland gazette. (Annapolis, Md.) 1910-1922, 1917-10-17
THE FAMILY TREE
And What 1t Means To Man-The
Trees of Lebanon and Mt. Carmel

Trees OF Lebanon and Mt. Iarmel
There is one thing to be said very
surely about trees, and that is that
their name is legion, and that the more
intimately one becomes acquainted
with the great family, the more one
sees how great it is. A well-known
administrator used to say, when he had
returned to England, after some
thirty years spent in China, that all
Englishmen were the same, whereas
the same could never be said of the
Chinese. Western peoples, naturally
and whole-heartily, reverse the situa-
ton And so it is with the trees.
Even the man having a good average
acquaintance with the family finds,
as his acquaintance becomes still
more intimate, that. for years, he has
been confusing own brothers and sis
tiers, in the most light-hearted and
confident way possible. OF course, all
this applies only to the inevitable
average man, to the man who has
made no special study of the ques-
ton, who is glad and grateful to take
trees as he finds them,
Who knows and loves the wind in the
pine,
Like the sigh of the surf on the
strand,
Or the breeze as it blows through the
poplar leaves,
Like rain on a thirsty land
There is, to be sure, the dendrolo-
gist. the man who coldly responds to
your thirst for acquaintanceship, with
some beautiful specimen by giving you
name, which few could, or would
care to remember. He, of course,
makes no mistakes. To him it is a
point of honr, not only never to for
get names, but always to be able to
put faces to them. Ones concern,
however, is inevitably with the aver
age man. No doubt the dendrologist
loves his trees, but. somehow or
other, when one knows just exactly
how the wind creates his wonderful
sea illusion amidst the pine branches
or his wonderful rain illusion through
the hestless leaves of the poplar, it is
never quiet the same.
And so the average man takes trees
as the bargee takes the Thames tow
ing paths, as he finds them, and one
the things he most surely find about
them, especially if it has come his
way to make much traffic over the
earths surface, is the way certain Of
their kind have monopolizing atten-
tion,- in certain lands There were
other trees in Lebanon besides cedars,
just as there are other trees in Lon
don beside planes, and yet the Jew
of three thousand years ago, if he
thought of cedars must surely have
thought of the goodly trees around
Mount Carmel, and it is doubtful
whether any true Londoner can see
a plane tree, in any part of the world,
without thinking of the things he most
surely finds about them, especially if
Embankment But the list might be
extended almost indefinitely. Who
that has travelled through Flanders
and Central France, for instance, and
watched, hour after hour, the tall
Lombardy poplar shooting up straight
and slim into the sky, will ever see
Lombardy poplar again, without
see again also the long, straight
roads and the little wayside villages
of the French countryside.
And then trees are forever doing
strange and inconsequent things,
which endear them to the heart of the
average man. Thus a good sturdy
oak. or an ash, with a future before
It, VIII decide, upon the top of an old
ruin or the parapet of an old bridge,
to set out on its career. Another
chooses the top of rock. and yet a
third forces it's way through many OBJ
stacles, and finally reaches the light,
out through the mouth of cave, or
up through an iron grating in some
little frequented side street of some
great city.
But amongst trees it is, perhaps, OF
the lone tree" which many people
will have the most precious memory.
Trees have always been held in high
regard of the pioneer as waymarks,
and the lone tree, the lone pine or
what not has ever figured largely in
the tale. be it fact or fiction of high
adventure. Away off on the north
west coast of Africa, where the surf
breaks tirelessly at the edge of an
almost tideless sea, where the desert,
yellow and glistening beneath the
sun. stretches away inland to the foot
hills on the farthest horizon, lies a
little city, splash Of white amidst
the sand. In all the picture, there is
only one green thing. 1t is lone
date palm which. toward the north
ern limit Of the town, rises tall and
straight and detached into the blue
sky Christian Science Monitor.