I have something more to say about elms. A relative tells me there is
one of great glory in Andover, near Bradford. I have some recollections
of the former place, pleasant and other. [I wonder if the old Seminary
clock strikes as slowly as it used to. My room-mate thought, when he
first came, it was the bell tolling deaths, and people’s ages, as they do
in the country. He swore—(ministers’ sons get so familiar with good
words that they are apt to handle them carelessly)—that the children were
dying by the dozen, of all ages, from one to twelve, and ran off next day
in recess, when it began to strike eleven, but was caught before the
clock got through striking.] At the foot of “the hill,” down in town,
is, or was, a tidy old elm, which was said to have been hooped with iron
to protect it from Indian tomahawks, (_Credat Hahnemannus_,) and to have
grown round its hoops and buried them in its wood. Of course, this is
not the tree my relative means.
Also, I have a very pretty letter from Norwich, in Connecticut, telling
me of two noble elms which are to be seen in that town. One hundred and
twenty-seven feet from bough-end to bough-end! What do you say to that?
And gentle ladies beneath it, that love it and celebrate its praises!
And that in a town of such supreme, audacious, Alpine loveliness as
Norwich!—Only the dear people there must learn to call it Norridge, and
not be misled by the mere accident of spelling.
Nor_wich_.
Por_ch_mouth.
Cincinnat_ah_.
What a sad picture of our civilization!
I did not speak to you of the great tree on what used to be the Colman
farm, in Deerfield, simply because I had not seen it for many years, and
did not like to trust my recollection. But I had it in memory, and even
noted down, as one of the finest trees in symmetry and beauty I had ever
seen. I have received a document, signed by two citizens of a
neighboring town, certified by the postmaster and a selectman, and these
again corroborated, reinforced, and sworn to by a member of that
extraordinary college-class to which it is the good fortune of my friend
the Professor to belong, who, though he has _formerly_ been a member of
Congress, is, I believe, fully worthy of confidence. The tree “girts”
eighteen and a half feet, and spreads over a hundred, and is a real
beauty. I hope to meet my friend under its branches yet; if we don’t
have “youth at the prow,” we will have “pleasure at the ’elm.”
And just now, again, I have got a letter about some grand willows in
Maine, and another about an elm in Wayland, but too late for anything but
thanks.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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