a.To aid in maintaining a natural supply;b.To repair the effects of past improvidence, andc.To increase the supply beyond its natural limits, rapidly enough to meet the necessities of a constantly increasing population.
a.To aid in maintaining a natural supply;
b.To repair the effects of past improvidence, and
c.To increase the supply beyond its natural limits, rapidly enough to meet the necessities of a constantly increasing population.
The preservation of normal conditions in inland waters is comparatively simple. A reasonable system of forestry and water purification is all that is required, and this is needed not only by the fish in the streams, but by the people living on the banks. It has been shown that a river which is too foul for fish to live in is not fit to flow near the habitations of man. Obstructions, such as dams, may, in most instances, be overcome by fish ladders. The salmon has profited much by these devices in Europe, and the immense dams in American rivers will doubtless be passable, even for shad and alewives, if the new system of fish-way construction devised by Col. McDonald, and now being applied on the Savannah, James, and Potomac, and other large rivers, fulfills its present promises of success.
Up to the present time, however, although much ingenuity and expense have been lavished upon fish-ways by the various state fish commissions of this country, there has been little practical outcome from their use. Our dams are too high, and the shad and alewives, which we are especially desirous to carry over these obstructions, do not seem to take kindly to the narrow, tortuous defiles of the fish ladders.
The protection of fish by law is what legislators have been trying to effect for many centuries, and we are bound to admit that the success of their efforts has been very slight indeed. Protective legislation rarely succeeds. The statute books of each state are crowded with laws which no one understands, least of all the men who made them, and which the state governments are powerless to enforce. Every one remembers Whittier’s grand old hero, Abraham Davenport, the Connecticut statesman, who, “on a May day of that far old year 1780,” when the earth was shrouded in darkness, and he and all his colleagues in the State Assembly felt that the judgment day had come, stood up, “albeit with trembling hands and shaking voice, and read an act to amend an act to regulate the shad and alewife fisheries”—and then went on to rebuke those around for their fearfulness and desire to leave the post of duty. Connecticut is as much at a loss now as then to know how to regulate her shad and alewife fisheries. Under a republican form of government, restrictive laws are not popular, and money would never be voted to enforce such laws, which, without an extensive police force, would be powerless. Some one has sagely remarked that the salmon is an aristocratic fish, which can only thrive under the shadow of a throne. Many states now have laws protecting fresh water fish in the breeding season, and numerous game protective associations are laboring with some success for their enforcement. Sales of fish out of season are also successfully prevented in certain city markets.
The attempts to regulate the fisheries at the mouths of rivers, so that spawning fish may be allowed free passage for a few hours, generally from Saturday evening to Monday morning, are meeting with but little success.
Maryland and Virginia attempt to some extent the protection of their oyster beds, and the former state keeps up an expensive police organization. The oyster law is founded in ignorance, however, and the chief effort being to keep away fishermen from other states, for the benefit of their own, there are small results except frequent quarrels and occasional bloodshed.
Connecticut is making the experiment of giving to individuals personal title to submerged land, to be used in oyster culture, and this, perhaps, is the wisest step taken. Oyster production must soon cease to be a free grabbing enterprise, and be placed upon the same footing as agriculture, or the United States will lose its beloved oyster crop, and in this country, as in England, a fresh oyster will be worth as much as a new-laid egg. Great Britain has, at present, two schools of fishery economists, the one headed by Professor Huxley, opposed to legislation, save for the preservation of fish in inland waters, the other, of which Dr. Francis Day is the chief leader, advocating a most strenuous legal regulation of the sea fisheries. Continental Europe is by tradition and belief committed to the last named policy. In the United States, on the contrary, public opinion is generally antagonistic to fishery legislation, and our Commissioner of Fisheries, after carrying on for fourteen years investigations upon this very question, has not yet become satisfied that laws are necessary for the perpetuation of the sea fisheries, nor has he ever recommended to Congress enactment of any description. Just here we meet the test problem in fish culture. Many of the most important commercial fisheries of the world, the cod fishery, the herring fishery, the sardine fishery, the shad and alewife fishery, the mullet fishery, the salmon fishery, the whitefish fishery, the smelt fishery, and many others, owe their existence to the fact that once a year these fishes gather together in closely swimming schools, to spawn in shallow water, on shoals, or in estuaries and rivers. There is a large school ofquasieconomists, who clamor for the complete prohibition of fishing during spawning time. This demand demonstrates their ignorance. Deer, game birds, and other land animals may easily be protected in the breeding season, so may trout and other fishes of strictly local habits. Not so the anadromous and pelagic fishes. If they are not caught in the spawning season, they can not be caught at all. I heard a prominent fish culturist recently advocating before a committee of the United States Senate, the view that shad should not be caught in the rivers, because they came into the rivers to spawn. When asked what would become of our immense shad fisheries if this were done, he said that doubtless some ingenious person would invent a means of catching them at sea.
The fallacy in the argument of these men lies in the suppositionthat it is more destructive to the progeny of a given fish to kill it when its eggs are nearly ripe, than to kill the same fish eight or ten months earlier.
We must not, however, ignore the counter argument. Such is the mortality among fish that only an infinitesimal percentage attain to maturity. Möbius has shown that for every grown oyster upon the beds of Schleswig-Holstein, 1,045,000 have died. Only a very small percentage, perhaps not greater than this, of the shad or the smelt ever come upon the breeding grounds. Some consideration, then, ought to be shown to the individuals which have escaped from their enemies and have come up to deposit the precious burden of eggs. How much must they be protected?
Here the fish culturist comes in with the proposition “that it is cheaper to make fish so plenty by artificial means that every fisherman may take all he can catch, than to enforce a code of protective laws.”
The salmon rivers of the Pacific slope, and the shad rivers of the east, and the whitefish fisheries of the lakes, are now so thoroughly under control by the fish culturist, that it is doubtful if any one will venture to contradict his assertion. The question now is, whether he can extend his domain to other species.
Legislation and fish-ways, then, are, as yet, of little practical importance. Actually, they repeat the proverbial act of the clown who locked the stable door after his horse had been stolen. No one makes laws or builds fish-ways until he is of the decided opinion that the fish are pretty nearly gone.
Artificial fish culture seems to offer the only remedy for the evils which have been described.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
There is now and then a biography so written that the reader is able to become intimately acquainted with the subject, to feel after reading that he has had a personal contact, and has formed a friendship which is warm and living. Such “Lives” are rare. Most works of this kind are so biased by the interpretations of the author, so full of facts and opinions that the reader loses all feeling of companionship in reading; he closes the book, knowing much about the subject, but rarely understanding him. A book which presents a man or woman in that personal way which makes a friendship through the medium of the book possible, confers a great gift upon the reading public.
The peculiar fitness of Mr. Cross’s “Life of George Eliot”[B]for giving us a new friend, must be attributed to the really remarkable taste and skill of his editing. The work bears the mark of a reverential hand. It is anIn Memoriamwhose only object has been to lay before the world a memory too strong and precious to be kept secret. But no such a biography could have been given the world had it not been for the peculiar nature of George Eliot herself. The material for this “Life” grew out of two strong elements in her character: the affectionate and persistent friendship which led her to reveal herself so fully to those she loved in her letters, and that constant introspection which made her journal often a mirror of her inner life. These materials make up the book, which is largely a study of her character, and, too, of her character as she understood it. She has verily written her own life. The interpretation remains for the readers.
It would have been possible for Mr. Cross to have given much information about her character which he has withheld, her opinions and much of her conversation; but he has wisely given the world only what she herself chose to reveal to her friends.
The story begins early. The first revelations in character are the strongest; the happiness and misery of the future life are revealed in the childhood traits. The earliest revelations which we find in George Eliot’s life are of affection and ambition; either, if strong enough to become a passion, drives its possessor along a thorny path until it is itself mastered, and where both exist in a nature, continual collision must occur between them. Before each is satisfied there must be a life struggle of the keenest sort. Such a struggle was presaged for Marian Evans very early. She herself tells how, when she was but four years of age, she played on the piano, of which she did not know a note, in order to impress the servant with a proper notion of her acquirements and generally distinguished position. As eager, too, she was for love as for recognition. In her reminiscences of her early life most vividly she portrays her earliest passion—one very common among affectionate girls—her love for her brother. “She used always to be at his heels, insisting on doing everything that he did.” When his first boyish craze took possession of him in shape of a pony, and she found it was separating them, she was nearly heart broken. Impressible, eager for work and ambitious for knowledge, she began life under an emotional pressure, which drove her into incessant distress lest those she loved should fail her, and which brought her devotion to her loved ones in constant collision with her ambition. At twenty-one, writing to a very intimate friend, she said: “I do not mean to be so sinful as to say that I have not friends most undeservedly kind and tender, and disposed to form a far too favorable estimate of me, but I mean I have no one who enters into my pleasures and griefs, no one with whom I can pour out my soul.” Eight years after this, having lost her father, she went abroad for a few months’ residence, and her letters home were full of eager longing for their sympathy and restless fear lest they should forget her. No change in her life diminished this feeling. She became an editor of theWestminster Review, and while overwhelmed with manuscripts and proofs she wrote: “You must know that I am not a little desponding now and then, and think that old friends will die off, and I shall be left with no power to make new ones again.” Undoubtedly this feeling tended to make her morbid in her younger days, and consequently dwarf her power. It is an important study of her life to trace the gradual melting of this disposition, and the final growth into a healthy happiness. When quite past the heyday of her life, she wrote a friend of her girlhood: “I am one of those, perhaps, exceptional people whose early childish dreams were much less happy than the outcome of life,” and again, but four years before her death: “I have completely lost mypersonalmelancholy. I often, of course, have melancholy thoughts about the destinies of my fellow creatures, but I am never in the mood of sadness, which used to be my frequent visitant, even in the midst of external happiness; and this, notwithstanding a very vivid sense that life is declining, and death close at hand.” This release from morbidness had two causes. She had taught her strong, affectional nature to find satisfaction in that commonplace, but little understood duty, loving her neighbors, and she had learned to enjoy things on their own account. The first article in this creed of happiness became George Eliot’s religion. She had abandoned her belief in the Christian religion when twenty-one years of age. She could not believe fully, and she was too independent and too reliant upon her own mind to conform to a religion she did not believe. The steps she took did not destroy the religious sense in her life. The earnestness which led her to write at nineteen, “May the Lord give me such an insight into what is truly good, that I may not restcontented with making Christianity a mere addendum to my pursuits, or with tacking it as a fringe to my garments;” which induced her to consider the novel and even oratorio as dangerous to spiritual development still remained, though without form. She was intensely in earnest, but it was many years before her love for mankind became a religion to her. A less strong character would have become flippant or scornful under this loss; hers only became more serious. She seems never to have forgotten what she had abandoned.
Though radically differing from most of her friends on religious questions, she never was uncharitable. “Of all intolerance, the intolerance calling itself philosophical is the most odious to me,” she wrote, and she lived out this opinion, in no way allowing the widest diversity to separate her from her friends. Her sympathy and charity indeed seem to increase, even if the breach in their opinion widened.
This habit of thought and feeling resulted in much personal moral benefit. “My own experience and development deepen every day my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.”
As she grew older, she comforted herself with the thought that “with that renunciation of self which age inevitably brings we get more freedom of soul to enter into the life of others.” She tried for “a religion which must express less care for personal consolation and a more deeply awing sense of responsibility to man, springing from sympathy with that which of all things is most certainly known to us, the difficulty of the human lot.” This was the great lesson in her growth toward happiness. A secondary step was her appreciation of the value of things in themselves. It is a serious obstacle to the happiness of women, that in the main they care for exterior life only as it is of value in the personal life. A book is dear because a friend has read or recommended it. This verse is fine from association; this strain of music because they heard it in a certain connection. Take thepersonalout of Art and Nature, and too often women care little for them. George Eliot learned to appreciate and love things for their own value. Music, to which she was from childhood deeply susceptible, she cultivated thoroughly, and no fine rendering ofgoodmusic ever was missed by her. She took the true, high view of life, which declares that from every good all possible enjoyment should be gained. Art was very dear to her, and we find in these quotations from her journal, notes on all the leading galleries of Europe, but in the very midst of her art studies she drops this comment, after noting a sight she had had of the snow covered Alps: “Sight more to me than all the art in Munich, though I love theartnevertheless. The great, wide-stretching earth, and the all-embracing sky—the birthright of us all—are what I care most to look at.”
But it would have been impossible for even her deep love for mankind, her fine enjoyment of the good and beautiful, to have completed her life. These things satisfied her affections, but there was another quality we have mentioned as prominent in her life: it was her ambition. At twenty she wrote despondently: “I feel that my besetting sin is the one of all others most destroying, as it is the faithful parent of them all—ambition, a desire insatiable for the esteem of my fellow-creatures.” Whatever she did, was done with all her might. Her mother died early, and she became housekeeper. Her struggles with the knotty questions of housewifery kept her in a constant worry, but she would do things right—whether it be currant jelly or a German translation. The same perfection marked her novels. Her progress was soon marked; it recommended her to people of standing, and gradually she had a circle of friends—people of strong minds and much culture—about her. Eager to do something, a way opened to her in 1844, when she was twenty-five years old. It was to translate into English a work of the German philosopher, Strauss. She did it, and what was better, did it well. Five years later she writes: “The only ardent hope I have for my future life is to have given me some woman’s duty.” The ambition to excel is already bending to the stronger emotion of affection. For a long time she worked, eager and anxious, but nothing seemed to open. In 1851 she went to London as assistant editor ofWestminster Review, and here most satisfactory opportunities for culture opened. She formed lasting friendships with Herbert Spenser, Harriet Martineau, Florence Nightingale, and indeed with all the people worth knowing, who filled London in the ’fifties. But her editing left no opportunity to do that special work to which she was looking, and which she did not understand. She wrote many reviews and essays. This writing was a sort of safety valve for her intellect, but it was not until September, 1856, that the new era began in her life. It was when she began to write fiction. The popular idea of fiction as stories which will do to kill time, but which for serious reading are quite useless, was not the idea of George Eliot. A nature so intensely serious, so anxious for noble work, could not content itself with trivial story telling; she did not aim at that, but at studies of life. As she finely writes to Mr. John Blackwood, who became her publisher: “My artistic bent is directed not all to the presentation of irreproachable character, but to the presentation of mixed human beings, in such a way as to call forth tolerant judgment, pity, and sympathy. And I can not step aside from what Ifeelto betruein character.” And again: “I should like to touch every heart among my readers with nothing but loving humor, with tenderness, with belief in goodness.” The story of her great success is familiar—her books are well known. In rapid succession she sent out “Scenes of Clerical Life,” “Adam Bede,” “The Mill on the Floss,” “Silas Marner,” “Romola,” “Felix Holt,” “The Spanish Gypsy,” “Middlemarch,” “Daniel Deronda,” and “Theophrastus Such.” Her convictions about how she should work were intense. She wrote andlivedher story, and once when urged to re-write a tale, replied that she could no more re-write a book than she could live over a year in her own life. Her novels are the embodiment of what she had felt, written that they might strengthen others. The conscientiousness with which she labored made her work sometimes most painful to her. Despondency lest she should fail, fear lest she had misinterpreted a character, depression lest this chapter should fall below a preceding in merit, tortured her in succession, but she worked because she believed she had found her place, and to do her best for mankind was her religion. The slow-growing nature struggling with eager desire for human love, and with a mastering ambition, not often reaches so ripe a stage as did hers. The rigid system of self-culture which she pursued through her life was the outgrowth of her ambition and of her intense interest in things, an interest which we have noticed as being one of the leading elements in her happiness. Reading, study, conversation, observation, writing, travel, were in turns employed in her course of self-discipline. She read incessantly, andthoroughly. Notice this list of books, the work of one month, and that when she was nearly fifty years of age: First book of “Lucretius;” sixth book of the “Iliad;” “Samson Agonistes;” Warton’s “History of English Poetry;” “Grote,” second volume; “Marcus Aurelius;” “Vita Nuova,” vol. iv; chapter one of the “Politique Positive;” Guest on “English Rhythms;” Maunce’s “Lectures on Casuistry.” Few months fell below this in reading, and this, too, while she was writing, seeing people, conversing, and suffering, for she had the misfortune to know, as she says, that “one thing is needful: a good digestion.”
As a life of earnest purpose, of continued struggle for a high living, of deepest desire to make the most of everything, and for everybody, there is none more marked than that of George Eliot. Non-conformity to the religion and the law in which we believe, must sadden her life for all, but an honest student of her character must, after reading this “Life,” accord to her what she herself never failed to give to the erring—charity.
FOOTNOTES[B]George Eliot’s Life, as related in her Letters and Journals. Arranged and edited by her husband, J. W. Cross. In three volumes. New York: Harper & Brothers.
[B]George Eliot’s Life, as related in her Letters and Journals. Arranged and edited by her husband, J. W. Cross. In three volumes. New York: Harper & Brothers.
[B]George Eliot’s Life, as related in her Letters and Journals. Arranged and edited by her husband, J. W. Cross. In three volumes. New York: Harper & Brothers.
BY THE HON. B. G. NORTHROP, LL.D.
Recent spring floods and the diminished flow of rivers in summer have called public attention to the cause and the remedy as never before. At the opening of the last session of Congress, its attention was called to the subject of Forestry, for the first time in any presidential message. Bills for the protection and extension of forests are now before Congress, and before many state legislatures. The last census presents striking facts which prove this to be a question of both state and national importance. The recent action of the national government shows a new appreciation of forestry. The marvel now is, that the general government did not earlier seek to protect its magnificent forests, once the best and most extensive in the world. Their importance to the nation was little understood. Even after a century of reckless waste, the United States government still owns 85,000,000 acres of timber—a mere fraction of what has been cut, or burned, without a thought of reproduction. The Forestry Division of the United States Department of Agriculture, though organized but six years ago, has already spread much valuable information before the country by its reports and by those of its special agents, commissioned to investigate the forests of the country and the means of their protection and extension. Ex-Governor R. W. Furnas, of Nebraska, for example, investigated the forests of California, Oregon, Washington Territory, and the western slope of the Rocky Mountains. His official reports on the stealing and reckless destruction of those timber lands, and also in regard to the new and extensive timber growing on the treeless plains of Nebraska, were of great public interest. The reports of Dr. F. B. Hough of New York, and F. B. Baker, of Kansas—also agents of the United States Forestry Division—have been extensively circulated and still more widely summarized in the press.
The National Forestry Congress is another index of the growth of popular interest on this subject. A large volume of the proceedings of that association at its meeting in Montreal was officially published by the Dominion of Canada. The best papers given at its three subsequent meetings have been published by the United States Department of Agriculture. The subject has been ably discussed in State Agricultural Reports, and many state and local associations have been formed to further this interest. The passage of the Timber Culture Act has greatly increased the area of planted woodland.
But of all these agencies no one has awakened so general an interest in agriculture as the appointment of Arbor Day, by governors of states, by legislatures, and by state, county and town superintendents of schools. The plan of Arbor Day is simple and inexpensive, and hence the more readily adopted and widely effective. In some states the work has been well done without any legislation. The best results, however, are secured when an act is passed requesting the Governor, each spring, to recommend the observance of Arbor Day, by a special message. The chief magistrate of the state thus most effectually calls the attention of all the people to its importance, and secures general and concerted action.Howforests conserve the water supplies and lessen floods is aside from the topic of this paper. While the fact of the increase of spring freshets is everywhere admitted, and scientists agree as to the cause, the popular disbelief of the true theory is the great hindrance to remedial action. The bills for the protection of the Adirondack forests, in the legislature of New York, in 1884, failed by reason of the opposition of the lumbermen, and the common doubt and denial of the benefits of forests in the conservation of the rainfall. I often met the same skepticism in the Ohio valley, even among the sufferers from the flood disasters. They were attributed to the extensive use of tile drains. But both in 1883 and 1884, these floods occurred when the ground was frozen deep, and the drains were therefore inoperative.
That so simple a cause as forest denudation should produce such disastrous results seems at first incredible. It is only when the vast areas contributing to a single river are considered, that the proof of the forest theory seems clear. Take the Ohio River, for illustration. The area drained by it is 214,000 square miles, or twenty-two times as much as that which in Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut is drained by the Connecticut River; an area which includes portions of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky. The length of the Ohio is about 1,000 miles, and that of its ten leading tributaries nearly 4,000, and that of the many minor affluents as much more. The smallest influences working over such immense regions, and ultimately combining in one stream, may enormously swell its volume. As the destruction of forests has been going on for centuries, the remedy must be the work of time, for it must include slow processes and agencies, eachseparatelyminute, which become important when multiplied by myriads and extended over broad areas. Arbor Day has proved such an agency.
A brief history of Arbor Day will show its aims. The surprising results already accomplished promise a still broader influence in the near future. The plan originated with ex-Governor J. Sterling Morton, the pioneer tree-planter of Nebraska. He secured the coöperation of the State Board of Agriculture, some thirteen years ago, when the Governor was induced to appoint the second Wednesday in April as a day to be devoted to economic tree-planting. By pen and tongue, as editor and lecturer, with arguments from theory and facts from his own practice, Mr. Morton succeeded in awakening popular enthusiasm in this work, in which he was ably seconded by Ex-Governor Furnas, of Nebraska, who has long served as Forest Commissioner for the United States Department of Agriculture.
In Nebraska a remarkable interest was awakened in the observance of her first Arbor Day, and over 12,000,000 trees were planted on that day. That enthusiasm was not a temporary effervescence. Each successive Governor has annually appointed such a day by an official proclamation, and the interest has been sustained and even increased from year to year. The State Board of Agriculture annually awards liberal prizes to encourage tree-planting. Hence Nebraska is the banner state of America in this work, having, according to official reports, as I am informed by ex-Governor Furnas, 244,353 acres of cultivated woodland, or more than twice that of any other state. The originator of Arbor Day is now recognized as a public benefactor, and hence, during the last campaign, as a candidate for Governor, ran some three thousand ahead of his party ticket. Though at first aiming at economic tree-planting, Nebraska now observes Arbor Day in schools. The example of Nebraska was soon followed by Kansas, which had over 120,000 acres of planted woodland. The Governor of that state issues an annual proclamation for Arbor Day, and it is observed by teachers and scholars and parents, in adorning both school and home grounds.
Four years ago the legislature of Michigan requested the Governor to appoint an Arbor Day. Such an appointment has been repeated each succeeding April. For the last three yearsa similar day has been appointed by the Governor of Ohio. Many schools, especially those of Cincinnati and Columbus, fitly kept the designated day. No man in this country has had a better opportunity of observing the influence of Arbor Day in schools than Superintendent Peaslee, who, after a trial of three years, says: “The observance of Arbor Day is the most impressive means of interesting the young in this subject. Should this celebration become general, such a public sentiment would lead to the beautifying by trees of every city, town, and village, as well as the public highways, church, and school grounds, and the homes of the people. If but the youth of Ohio could be led to plant their two trees each, how, by the children alone, would the state be enriched and beautified within the next fifty years. By our Arbor Day observance the importance of forestry was impressed upon the minds of thousands of children who then learned to care for and protect trees. Not one of those 20,000 children in Eden Park on Arbor Day injured a single tree.”
West Virginia furnishes another illustration of the influence of observing Arbor Day in schools. In the face of many difficulties, State School Superintendent Butcher appointed an Arbor Day in schools in April, 1883. Without waiting for any legislative or gubernatorial sanction, solely on his own responsibility, he invited the school officers, teachers, parents, and pupils on the designated day to plant trees on the grounds of their schools and homes. He made the April number of hisSchool Journalan “Arbor” number, and circulated it gratuitously over the State. The results exceeded his expectations. It started good influences onmindsas well as grounds. This great success prompted a similar observance last April, for which greater preparations were made, with still better results. When called to advocate this measure In various parts of West Virginia last spring, I found the people and the press most responsive in encouraging this practical movement. On the day after the celebration, the papers of Wheeling, for example, commended the work in such terms as the following: “Arbor Day was gloriously celebrated yesterday, and was a splendid success. All—the oldest and the youngest—evinced the liveliest interest. Arbor Day will be one of the institutions of our schools.”
At the annual meeting of the State Teachers’ Association of Indiana, held in December, 1883, a kindred plan was recommended and unanimously adopted, and an efficient committee appointed to carry it out. The State Board of Horticulture heartily endorsed the measure. After a statement of the plan, the State Board of Agriculture invited me to prepare a resolution in its favor, which they promptly adopted. Governor Porter received my suggestions with special interest, and said the measure should have his cordial support. He soon after gave it his official sanction, and issued a proclamation to the teachers and people of the state, in which he predicted that the appointed day would be a memorable one, and “the beginning of a movement for a much more extended system of tree-culture, and the restoration of the varieties of trees, useful and beautiful, which have been so recklessly sacrificed that nature cries aloud for redress,” closing by calling on “the teachers to do all in their power to make Arbor Day a day of the most ardent and inspiring interest.” State School Superintendent Holcombe gave his personal and official influence heartily to this work. The lectures given by his invitation on this subject were fully reported by the press, for the newspapers of Indiana cordially coöperated in this movement. These combined influences secured the general observance of the appointed day, and the results were most gratifying. Such combined agencies in nearly every state of the Union would promise similar results.
At the last annual Convention of the State Teachers’ Association of Wisconsin, the presentation of Arbor Day in schools led to the adoption of a resolution in favor of such an observance, and to the appointment of an efficient committee to carry out the plan. At the National Educational Association held in Madison, Wisconsin, with an attendance of over five thousand, a resolution recommending the observance of Arbor Day in schools in all our states was unanimously adopted. Such a day has been observed with great interest in some of the provinces of Canada.
The American Forestry Congress, which includes the leading arborists of Canada and the United States, adopted, at my suggestion, the following resolution: “In view of the wide-spread results of the observance of Arbor Day in many states, this Congress recommends the appointment of such a day in all our states and in the provinces of the dominion of Canada,” and appointed a committee, consisting of the Chief of the Forestry Division of the United States Department of Agriculture, the State Superintendent of Schools of West Virginia, and myself to secure the general adoption of this plan, and especially Arbor Day in schools. As chairman of that committee, I have already presented this subject to the Governors of many states, and the proposition has met a favorable response.
It may be objected to Arbor Day, or to any lessons on forestry in schools, that the course of study is already overcrowded, and this fact I admit. But the requisite talks on trees, their value and beauty, need occupy but two or three hours. In some large cities there may be little or no room for tree-planting, and no call for even a half-holiday for this work, but even there such talks, or the memorizing of suitable selections, on the designated day, would be impressive and useful. The essential thing is tostarthabits of observation and occupation with trees, which will prompt pupils in their walks, or when at work, or at play, to study them. The talks on this subject, which Superintendent Peaslee says were the most interesting and profitable lessons the pupils of Cincinnati ever had in a single day, occupied only the morning of Arbor Day, the afternoon being given to the practical work. Such talks will lead our youth to admire trees, and realize that they are the grandest products of nature, and form the finest drapery that adorns this earth in all lands. Thus taught, they will wish to plant and protect trees, and find in their own happy experience that there is a peculiar pleasure in their parentage, whether forest, fruit, or ornamental—a pleasure which never cloys, but grows with their growth. Like grateful children, trees bring rich filial returns, and compensate a thousand fold for all the care they cost. This love of trees, early implanted in the school, and fostered in the home, will make our youth practical arborists.
They should learn that trees have been the admiration of the greatest and best men of all ages. The ancients understood well the beauty as well as the economic and hygienic value of trees. The Hebrew almost venerated the palm. It was the chosen symbol of Judea on their coins, and was graven on the doors of the Temple as the sacred sign of justice. The Cedar of Lebanon was justly the pride of the Jews, and became to them the emblem of strength and beauty. The Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans were proficients in tree-planting. Hence Thebes, Memphis, Athens, Carthage, Rome, Pompeii and Herculaneum, as their ruins still show, had their shaded streets or parks. Two thousand years ago, the richest Romans maintained a rural home, as does the wealthy Londoner, Viennese, or Berliner to-day, and their ancient villas were lavishly adorned. The Paradise of the Persians was filled with trees and roses. This taste for beautiful gardens was transplanted from Persia to Greece, and the Greek philosophers held their schools in beautiful gardens, or groves. The devastations of parks, the destruction of shade trees, the neglect of public streets and private grounds, the decay of rural tastes, and the utter slight of home adornments, were clearer proofs of the great relapse to barbarism than the vandalism which destroyed the proud monuments of classic art and literature.
Arbor Day has already initiated a movement of vast importancein eight states. In tree-planting, the beginning only is difficult. The obstacles are all met at the outset, because they are usually magnified by the popular ignorance of this subject. It is the first step that costs—at least, it costs effort to set this thing on foot, but that step once taken, others are sure to follow. This very fact that the main tug is at the start, on account of the inertia of ignorance and indifference, shows that such start should be made easy, as is best done by an Arbor Day proclamation of the Governor, which is sure to interest and enlist the youth of an entire state in the good work. When the school children are invited each to plant at least “two trees” on the home or school grounds, the aggregate number planted will be more than twice that of the children enlisted, for parents and the public will participate in the work.
Tree-planting is fitted to give a needful lesson of forethought to the juvenile mind. Living only in the present and for the present, youth are apt to sow only where they can quickly reap. A meager crop soon in hand, outweighs a golden harvest long in maturing. They should learn to forecast the future as the condition of wisdom. Arboriculture is a discipline in foresight—it is always planting for the future. There is nothing more ennobling for youth, than the consciousness of doing something for future generations, something which shall prove agrowingbenefaction in coming years. Tree-planting is an easy way of perpetuating one’s memory long after he has passed away. The poorest can in this way provide himself with a monument grander than the loftiest shaft of chiseled stone which may suggest duty to the living, while it commemorates the dead. Such associations grow in interest from year to year and from generation to generation. By stimulating a general interest in tree-planting among our youth, Arbor Day will yield a rich harvest to future generations. George Peabody originated the motto, so happily illustrated by his munificent gifts to promote education: “Education—the debt of the present to future generations.” We owe it to our children to leave our lands the better for our tillage and tree-planting, and we wrong ourselves and them, if our fields are impoverished by our improvidence.
Arbor Day in school has led youth to adorn the surroundings of their homes, as well as of the schools, and to extensive planting by the wayside. How attractive our roads may become by long avenues of trees! This is beautifully illustrated in many countries of Europe. In France, for example, the government keeps a statistical record of the trees along the roads. The total length of public roads in France is 18,750 miles, of which 7,250 are bordered with trees, while 4,500 are now being, or are soon to be, planted. Growing on lands otherwise running to waste, such trees are grateful to the traveler, but doubly so to the planter.
The influence of Arbor Day in schools in awakening a just appreciation of trees, first among pupils and parents, and then the people at large, is of vast importance in another respect. The frequency of forest fires is the greatest hindrance to practical forestry. But let thesentimentof trees be duly cultivated, first among our youth, and then among the people, and they will be regarded as our friends, as is the case in Germany. The public need to learn that the interests of all classes are concerned in the conservation of forests. Through the teaching of their schools this result was long since accomplished in Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, and other European countries. The people everywhere realize the need of protecting trees. An enlightened public sentiment has proved a better guardian of their forests than the national police. A person wantonly setting fire to a forest would there be looked upon as an outlaw, like the miscreant who should poison a public drinking fountain.
BY CHANCELLOR J. H. VINCENT, D.D.
Not all members of the “C. L. S. C.” can enjoy the benefits of a local circle. Some live in the country, or in remote parts of the city. They can not get out at night, through lack of company, or because the house, the boys, or the baby must not be left alone; the local circle is not under wise direction, and is unprofitable; or it may be that the only accessible local circle is a close corporation, and is “inaccessible.” Father or husband objects to the time wasted, or the long walk, or something else. So the student is solitary. Whatever is done must be done alone.
This is not an unmixed evil, because it may develop power in the student, or drive him or her to find associates at home, associates who are not enrolled in Plainfield as “regulars,” and some of whom are quite too young to be enrolled at all. No deprivation in this world that does not make a place for some other unsought, unexpected blessing.
I purpose to offer a few hints to these solitary readers, who may, I trust, find much profit out of the restrictions of providence, and do their work well even though it be done alone. On the blank pages of your necessity you may make records of your own, worth more to you than volumes of other people’s print.
1. Although alone, remember that you are associated with a great Circle numbering thousands and tens of thousands of members. You are not alone, but one of many. This thought helps you. It sets currents of sympathy in motion. It annihilates distance. It fills the very air about you with companions with whom you are in sweet fellowship, although you have never seen them. They are a great cloud of witnesses. They march under the same banner; put their names on the same great record book in the central office; read the same pages; sing the same songs; answer the same questions; recite the same mottoes; observe the same memorial days; and turn with tender hearts to the same heavens, under the mystic spell of the vesper hour; experience the same longings after true culture, and have hearts full of sympathy for their fellow-students everywhere. This thought of oneness in work gives feelings of kinship and companionship. The solitary student in the little room—kitchen, sitting room, library, or bed chamber—is surrounded by thousands of fellow-students. They seem to look over the page with you. They seem to whisper words of good will and faith, and some of them, I assure you, are royal people. They would give you such greeting, if they had opportunity, as would make you proud and glad of your connection with the Circle. Indeed, solitariness is impossible to the thoughtful member of the C. L. S. C.
2. This sense of fellowship is increased, and a helpful stimulus given to the solitary worker, by reflecting on the character of the great fraternity of which you are a part. We now enroll more than seventy thousand members. Perhaps twenty-five thousand have practically given up the readings. Only fifty thousand remain with us. Many thousands of readers are connected with local circles who have never joined as “regulars” at the central office in Plainfield, N. J. There are thousands who are reading a part of the course, but who neither belong to the local nor general circle. I believe that these non-recorded and irregular readers make up for the lapsed thousands, so that to-day we have nearly or quite seventy thousand people doing all or a part of the required reading. This, therefore, becomes a great institution. Its territorialextent is as vast as its numerical strength. There are “C. L. S. C.s” in all parts of the world. Our office records contain names from India, China, Japan, the Sandwich Islands, and many other outlying regions, while the list in Canada and on the Pacific coast runs up among the thousands. In every state and territory members are to be found.
And who are these with whom you, my solitary student, are associated? They represent every calling in life, and almost every grade, social and intellectual. Here are lawyers, judges, physicians, clergymen, doctors of divinity, college graduates, literally by the thousand, who seek through our course to review the studies of other and earlier years. Here are seminary and high school graduates, and people old and young who dropped out of the grammar school when they were too young to understand their folly in doing so. Here are business men, mechanics and farmers who have been prospered, and who covet now a measure of culture to fit them for society, that their money may gain for them and their families more than a mere social recognition. Here are mothers good and true, who do not want to part hands with sons and daughters as they enter the higher schools, but who propose by our course of reading to keep in the literary and scientific world where their children are to be at home. Here are people of “low degree,” who toil for bread, with lengthened hours of service, that they may help those who are dependent upon them. They are in shops and kitchens, and have souls that would put honor into palaces. They want outlook as they go weighted down through busy and weary years. They do not expect always to be slaves to society and circumstance. There is blood-royal in every heart-beat, and power to hold princedoms in some near future. So, despised of men who live, they hold converse through books with gifted and kingly souls who, though dead, yet live, and who work in other kingly souls. There are many of these disguised princes and princesses in your Circle.
Here too are sufferers in homes of bereavement and pain, where arms are empty and hearts are full, where love calls but receives no answer, where disease binds the body but leaves the mind free to grieve over its loss; where lack of work gives place to temptation, and renders occupation of some sort a moral and religious necessity; where worldliness, that makes the soul barren, needs thoughtfulness to moisten, beautify and fructify the life.
In such great and gracious companionship you sit down for solitary study. Dismiss the thought, therefore, that this is solitude. Reach out your soul to greet the currents of invisible and loving influence that pour in upon you from every quarter.
3. Select and furnish your Chautauqua corner. Do not be too anxious to have it harmonize with other corners of the room. Put shelves for your books “required” and for “review.” On the lowest shelf pileThe Chautauquans. On the wall put up the motto cards, the list of memorial days, the Chautauqua calendar, the photograph or engraving of the Hall of Philosophy, and such other Chautauqua views as you approve. Put up busts or engravings of the great leaders—Homer, Cicero, Dante, Milton, Goethe. Somewhere place a picture of Bryant, the earliest distinguished friend of the C. L. S. C. By gradual additions fill the Chautauqua corner with pictures and bookshelves, busts and mottoes, all in the line of your reading, until the other corners and the intervening walls shall be filled with reminders of Chautauqua and the world of literature, science and art it represents. And if somehow you can place on the wall that matchless engraving representing the great Master with his two disciples on the way to Emmaus, you will, in a sense, sanctify your room, and set forth most effectively, the aim, scope and spirit of the great Chautauqua movement. In such a room, or in such a corner, can students be solitary?
4. You will greatly increase your power by systematic habits. One may “read up” at any time, but the regular daily reading which renders unnecessary what is called “reading up,” is much the better way. It renders the work comparatively light; it makes the C. L. S. C. a help to other less congenial work of the day into which it falls like a refreshing shower. It forces life into a system which always expedites and lightens labor. It schools the will. It brings lower duties into proper subjection to the higher. It is every way better to do each day’s work as each day comes. Thus working alone, but systematically, one keeps the hand in and does not lose grasp, taste or delight.
5. Though compelled to work alone, make casual contacts with others afford opportunities for drawing them out, for finding out what they know, or for corroborating your own views. Ask questions. Elicit opinions. Start conversation. Try to tell what you know or think. Tell your children. Tell your neighbors. As you interest them, you set them in search of knowledge, which finding, they will later on report to you, and you thus give them a start in lines of self-improvement.
6. This setting others at work in quest of knowledge for you is a most practicable way of getting knowledge and doing good to the finders thereof.
Write out ten different questions, and give one to each of ten young boys and girls of a high school, for example. They will ransack libraries, consult teachers, find out and report what you want to know, and be immensely helped by the knowledge found and the service rendered. Though alone, you need not work alone.
7. Practice talking to yourself about the things you have read. Put facts and dates into sentences. Now and then write out these sentences, or speak them off. Recite a lesson to yourself every day. Make a speech with yourself as audience. Put facts into recitative lullabies, by which you sing baby to sleep. Don’t do too much of all this, lest it weary you, but do a little of this sentence-framing and solitary speech-making, and nursery-crooning every day. You will then have a local circle of you, and yourself and your own soul. Now one’s self makes very good society sometimes; there are so many powers and voices and thoughts and projects in a single soul.
8. Lift your soul up to its height, now and then, and breathe a thought of the heart that may grow into a prayer as you recall the great Circle of which you are a member. Think in silence of their multiplied and varied circumstances, perils, temptations and necessities. Think of the disheartened, the bereaved, the suffering, the doubting; those who have great power, but do not know how to use it; those who are sick of sin and worldliness, and do not know how to get into the path of holiness and peace. Think of all these, and then pray. Let your heart swell toward God in sympathy and longing.
Thus will you find in your solitude the presence of the Spirit invisible and eternal, whose name is love, and whose home is heaven, and whose children are the lowly and meek and devout, who love souls—the world full of souls—and who daily bear them in tender sympathy to the throne.
They who do these things can not be alone.
If it were not for my love of beautiful nature and poetry, my heart would have died within me long ago. I never felt before what immeasurable benefactors these same poets are to their kind, and how large a measure, both of actual happiness and prevention of misery they have imparted to the race. I would willingly give up half my fortune, and some little of the fragments of health and bodily enjoyment that remain to me, rather than that Shakspere should not have lived before me.—Lord Jeffrey (from a letter to Lord Cockburn, 1833).
First Week(ending April 8).—1. “Chemistry,” chapters XVIII, XIX and XX.
2. “History of the Reformation,” from page 1 to 27.
3. “The Circle of the Sciences,” inThe Chautauquan.
4. Sunday Readings for April 5, inThe Chautauquan.
Second Week(ending April 15).—1. “Chemistry,” chapters XXI and XXII.
2. “History of the Reformation,” from page 27 to 55.
3. “Home Studies in Chemistry and Physics,” inThe Chautauquan.
4. Sunday Readings for April 12, inThe Chautauquan.
Third Week(ending April 22).—1. “Chemistry,” chapter XXIII.
2. “History of the Reformation,” from page 55 to 88.
3. “Easy Lessons in Animal Biology,” inThe Chautauquan.
4. Readings inOur Alma Mater.
5. Sunday Readings for April 19, inThe Chautauquan.
Fourth Week(ending April 30).—1. “Chemistry,” chapters XXIV, XXV and XXVI.
2. “History of the Reformation,” from page 88 to 117.
3. “Aristotle,” inThe Chautauquan.
4. Readings inOur Alma Mater.
5. Sunday Readings for April 26, inThe Chautauquan.
1. Essay—Easter.
2. Selection—“All Fool’s Day.” By Addison.
3. A Paper on the Life of Martin Luther.
Music.
4. Fifteen Minutes’ Talk on the Cause of the Present Troubles in the Soudan.
5. Character Sketch—General Gordon.
6. Debate—Resolved, that dynamite is more productive of evil than good.
1. Selection—“Martin Luther.” From Robertson’s “History of Charles V.” Found also in Chambers’s “Cyclopedia of English Literature.”
2. A Paper on the Inquisition.
3. Recitation—“The Prisoner of Chillon.”—By Byron.
4. Character Sketch—John Knox.
Music.
5. Essay—The Vegetation of the Carboniferous Period.
6. A General Talk on Socialism.
7. Critic’s Report.
1. Essay—The Massacre of St. Bartholomew.
2. Recitation—“Robinson of Leydon.”—By O. W. Holmes.
3. Character Sketch.—William of Orange.
Music.
4. A Paper on Mount Cenis.
5. Selection—“The Chambered Nautilus.” By O. W. Holmes.
6. Conversation on New Books.
7. Questions and Answers for the month inThe Chautauquan.
Music.
1. Roll call—Quotations from Shakspere.
2. A Paper on the Life and Times of Shakspere.
Music.
3. The Story of “The Tempest.”
4. Recitation—“Perseverance.” Selected from “Troilus and Cressida,” Act III., scene 3; beginning, “Time hath, my lord, a wallet,” etc.; ending, “One touch of Nature makes the whole world kin.”
5. Essay—Characteristics of Shakspere’s Women.
Music.
6. Analysis of “Winter’s Tale.”
7. Court scene in “Merchant of Venice,” Act IV., scene 1; beginning, “Is your name Shylock?” ending with the exit of Shylock.
The plan followed by many Shakspere clubs would afford a fine entertainment. They assign the characters in any one of the plays (that of “Julius Cæsar” being exceptionally fitting for an evening of this kind) to the different members of the circle, who read the parts assigned.
To hold a Shakspere carnival would be a very interesting way in which to commemorate the day. Let each one come dressed in costume to represent any one of Shakspere’s characters and personate that character throughout the evening.
“We Study the Word and the Works of God.”—“Let us keep our Heavenly Father in the Midst.”—“Never be Discouraged.”
1.Opening Day—October 1.
2.Bryant Day—November 3.
3.Special Sunday—November, second Sunday.
4.Milton Day—December 9.
5.College Day—January, last Thursday.
6.Special Sunday—February, second Sunday.
7.Founder’s Day—February 23.
8.Longfellow Day—February 27.
9.Shakspere Day—April 23.
10.Addison Day—May 1.
11.Special Sunday—May, second Sunday.
12.Special Sunday—July, second Sunday.
13.Inauguration Day—August, first Saturday after first Tuesday; anniversary of C. L. S. C. at Chautauqua.
14.St. Paul’s Day—August, second Saturday after first Tuesday; anniversary of the dedication of St. Paul’s Grove at Chautauqua.
15.Commencement Day—August, third Tuesday.
16.Garfield Day—September 19.
The difficulty of holding a circle together is sometimes very great. Not a little thorough study of the needs and natures of the members must tax the leader who would hold a circle which has no interest in its work. AtRichmond, Maine, our friends have experienced this difficulty. A circle of fifteen was formed in January, 1884, but did not continue its meetings.The lukewarmness of a few broke the interest of all; but ten of the members did their reading apart. These ten took matters into their own hands last fall, and now Richmond has a “Merry Meeting” circle, of twenty-two members, interested and promising.
Nashua, New Hampshire, has a Chautauqua circle. It has been in existence for two years past, with varying fortunes. Last fall, when reorganized for the season, it consisted of ten ladies, but now numbers fourteen. Though this number is less than one half that of the last year, the interest and enthusiasm are much greater. The weekly meetings are occasions of great interest and instruction. They follow, with frequent modifications, the program arranged inThe Chautauquan, making the roll call and question box regular features. The only difficulty with which they meet is that they are all so busy that they can scarcely prepare for each program. They also derive much pleasure and profit in observing the memorial days. The circle is called the “Raymond” circle, in honor of the Rev. B. P. Raymond, president of Lawrence University, Appleton, Wis., founder of this branch.
The “Athenian Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle” ofWest Enosburgh, Vt., has entered upon its first year in the Chautauqua course. Although in its infancy, it shows a great deal of interest and enthusiasm. The circle was organized September 29, 1884. The officers are president, vice president and secretary. The circle began with eight members and has increased to thirteen. One of the most interesting exercises of this circle is the pronouncing match, each person being allowed to try once; if he misses he sits down. The words for the next match are the names of the sixty-six elements in chemistry.
Our travels throughMassachusettsthis month furnish much interesting circle news. The “Star” circle, inFoxboro, reorganized in October with twenty-eight members, which includes all the graduates with one exception. They believe there in once a C. L. S. C. always a C. L. S. C. The weekly meetings are reported in the local paper, and more are inquiring about the work than in previous years. One reason may be that they are but eighteen miles from the “Hall on the Hill,” which is in process of erection in South Framingham.——The “Henry M. King” circle, connected with the Dudley Street church,Boston, was organized in November, and has twenty-five members. Of these the larger part are gentlemen, not of leisure, but business men, who bring with them into the bi-weekly meetings the same energy and perseverance that characterize a successful business enterprise. These are certainly the ones who might with a good show of reason say: “No time.” But on the contrary theyhavetime, not only for the regular work, but for the preparation of papers requiring much time and research.——AtNorth Attleborothe new “Bryant” circle is four months old, and numbers twenty-six members. They open the meetings with reading Scripture lessons and singing Chautauqua songs. Roll call is responded to by quotations from a standard author, followed by essays, recitations, blackboard exercises, questions, discussions, etc., as the committee of instruction has arranged. The secretary writes: “If we are not great, our hopes are.”——“Profit as well as enjoyment we are getting from our studies,” says a member of the circle atNorth Weymouth. This organization is a circle of ’83, and has had time to thoroughly test the course. They have had recently a pleasant memorial service, and have been favored with chemical experiments by a chemist.——Pleasant notes of the work atWest Madfordhave been sent us by the secretary: “Through the influence of one sturdy little lady, six or eight people met together last October and talked up the feasibility of the C. L. S. C. They elected a president and secretary, drew up a few by-laws, and are now in good running order. They meet once in two weeks. Their membership was limited to twenty, which was quickly reached. The opinion of these members seems to be that this circle is as good, if not better, than any reported in your magazine. We all work with a will, cull the best from the programs given for the local circles, and add original ideas. Each member, in the order of his enrollment, makes out the program. This gives each one an opportunity to do his share, as well as to add his own ideas. We think this feature much superior to the general mode of allowing the ‘chair’ to prepare all programs.”——Amesburyhas a circle of unusual strength. We have been so fortunate as to receive a letter which gives an account of a delightful entertainment held by them in December. Our friend says: “Thinking perhaps you might like to hear from us once again, we are glad to write you of our pleasant and prosperous winter of literary work, brought about by the grand C. L. S. C. movement. Our meetings are held on the second and fourth Tuesday of each month, the programs comprise essays, music, readings and conversation, and are social and very delightful, showing a marked improvement on our ‘feeble beginning’ a year ago. Two new circles have been formed this winter, one, the ‘Delphic,’ having forty or more members. On the 18th of December we held our first public meeting in honor of ‘Our Poet’s’ (Mr. John G. Whittier) birthday, to which we invited the ‘Delphic’ circle, also the ‘Thursday Evening Club,’ an older literary society of Amesbury, and other friends, about three hundred in all. Members from the three circles took part in the program, which had been carefully prepared. We were greatly pleased to receive from Mr. W. C. Wilkinson a paper entitled ‘Whittier at the Receipt of Customs,’ which was read to us by his friend, the Rev. P. S. Evans, of Amesbury. As Mr. Whittier, owing to a previous engagement, could not be present with us, resolutions were drawn up and sent to him, as follows: