Such was the current of my thoughts when I met, recently, the overseer of a highway resting, at noon, from his labors. To him, and for him, a little speech was made; and what was the reply? “Too many shade-trees will encourage the tramps”! So he who loves to wander out of town must take the dusty highways as they are, and sigh for pleasant shade he can not enter. To plant a wayside tree, to have a country byway beautiful, must not be thought of—it will encourage the tramps! Now, it so happens that, near where I live, a chestnut-tree was spared, two centuries ago, probably because it was too crooked for fence-rails. Certainly for no praiseworthy motive was it allowed to stand; but it does, and so to-day it casts a shadow in which half a regiment might gather. Not strangely at all, every man, woman, and child in the neighborhood loves the old tree, and points to it with pride. Were it struck by lightning, it would have a public funeral. And yet I have not found that any of my neighbors, except those very near the town, have planted even a single wayside tree. On the contrary, a noble row of catalpas was felled not long since for fence-posts! A wayside tree means, to the pedestrian, something more than a mere island of shade in an ocean of sunshine. A stately tree has many lovers, and hosts of birds are sure to crowd its branches. Such a tree then becomes the Mecca whereat the rambler spends the hours of hot high noon, not only pleasurably but profitably—for I hold that a bird can not be watched for long without gain. Is it nothing, as one rests in the shade after a long tramp, to have a wood-thrush sing to him? Is it not a lesson to the weak-hearted to hear the restless red-eye’s ceaseless song? The perverse grumbler, has he a trace of reason, will, at least secretly, own that much of which he complains might be far worse, after listening to the singing of a bird perched in a wayside tree. Though shorn of so much that Nature granted to the most commonplace of lands, chaos has not quite come again. Certainly, however barren a sandy field may look, it is not yet a desert. As any ornithologist will tell you, birds, though there be little that favors them and much that is harmful beset them everywhere, will persistently cling to a tree by the roadside; will even nest in it, although the ubiquitous small boy showers them with stones; and, more, though persecution is the order of their day, will sing as in a paradise regained, thankful that the world has even this much of untamed nature left. If, then, in spite of themselves, farmers love what wayside trees there are, why can we not have more? Think of a leisured stroll, of a hot summer’s day, through a long avenue of leafy oaks! Skeleton-Lifting.