Norwich bulletin., 1922-05-26

farmers are thus ob1ivious to the beau ties which surround them. There is very considerable and. think, increasing number who see in the landscape some- thing more than an area to grow spuds on. They have to dig dirt like the rest of us, but are so wholly absorbed in the gravel beneath their hoes that they can't also see the beauty of the adjacent mead ow which spring dandelions have transformed overnight into veritable Field of the Gold Cloth
 These farmers recognize the stern first duty of their lives, to make and main tain homes for their families. But they don't stop there. They refuse to think solely in terms of nearby dirt That, the sentence of their fate has condemned l them to belabor. But 1t has not forbidden them to life their eyes, occasionally, to the glories that beckon in the distance. I know one such farmer, right among our own neighbors, too, who one day l hitched up his horse and, with his wife drove some eight or ten miles across country and rough back roads. till they i reached little grove of evergreens which had for years attracted their eyes on the distant horizon When they reached I their goal they found 1t composed of l Norway spruces. Let me quote from this exploring farmers letter
 1 My hail to the owner of the trees brought him to our buggy side. He was | 8 man past fifty years and his face, at first seemed a sad one. When he learned that we had come such a distance l merely to have a closeup of his cher
 ished trees, his face frightened up and he gave us bits of their history His
 grandfather planted them. Some were set so close to the house that, when they
 had grown, their dropping branches ov- Ter swept the roof and injured the shin. gles But, said he, Mother didn't want
 them cut down while she lived, and
 don't want to cut them, now |"
 And so, though neither the grandfather
 who set them out, nor the mother wht
 protected them. nor he who had cherished
 them for his fifty years knew their nam, till the visitor told him, these trees hat
 grown into the love of three generations
 Not only that, but they had lighted ul the common place New England land
 scape with gleam of beauty and myster,
 visible from miles away and irresist ibly alluring.
 ! sometimes think that the old farmer,
 of preceding generations had keene
 sense of rural beauty than many of us thelr descendants, can boast. Nearly al
 the old farmsteads which have endured
 in my neighborhood for hundred year
 have more or less stately rows of tree
 before them, set by hands long sine
 turned to dust. I have heard objection t
 roadside tree-planting by those who as
 serted that the shade delayed the dryin, up of the highways in the spring or aft
 CT summer rains. But in some states Massachusetts noticeably-the road
 makers are now setting out trees by tn
 thousands along their new improved high
 ways. This looks as if they didn't re
 gard the possible damage they might d. as serious. And certainly nothing add so greatly to the beauty of country road as this sentinelling of them with trees On one big farm which I know in oul neighboring state of New York, tn former owners set cherry trees along tn , Iroad fences. But this was before tn