PLANTING A TREE
On Arbor Day I took a spade, and then a large round hole I made, and planted there a tree; and in that tree, in coming days, the birds will sing their roundelays; and twitter in their glee.
I am an ancient also-ran; I am an old and feeble man, I soon must hit the flume; but it’s a pleasant thing to know that there will be that tree to show, when I am in the tomb. Beneath its boughs the kids will play, and veterans all bent and gray will in its shade recline; and peradventure one will sigh, “I well recall the dippy guy, who planted here this pine. The swath he cut was very small, while he was on this mundane ball, but when life neared its end, this tree he planted with his spade, and here we’re resting in its shade, and bless him as a friend.”
And as the long, slow years go by, perchance that stately tree will die; there’s death for all, it seems, and men, to earn the needed plunk, will separate its mighty trunk, and fashion boards and beams.
And one who plans to build a shack, will to the lumber dealer track, and purchase beam and board; and carpenters will straightway go, and build as fine a bungalow as mister can afford. The walls and roof of my good tree, will shelter human grief and glee, for, maybe, untold years; will echo to both sob and song, the laughter of the bridal throng, the plash of old wives’ tears.
I like to speculate this way; but now my boy comes in to say, ere he departs for school, “That tree you planted by the fence now looks like twenty-seven cents—it’s dead as Cæsar’s mule.”