Category: Trees

Categories
1860s Short Story Trees

The Talk of the Trees that Stand in the Village Street

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The Talk of the Trees that Stand in the Village Street

By Jane Andrews
Annotations by Josh benjamin
Childe Hassam. The Vermont Village (Peacham). Etching on paper, 1923. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

HOW still it is! — nobody in the village street; the children all at school, and the very dogs sleeping lazily in the sunshine; only a south wind blows lightly through the trees, lifting the great fans of the horse-chestnut, tossing the slight branches of the elm against the sky, like single feathers of a great plume, and swinging out fragrance from the heavy-hanging linden-blossoms.

Through the silence there is a little murmur, like a low song; it is the song of the trees; each has its own voice, which may be known from all others by the ear that has learned how to listen.

The topmost branches of the elm are talking of the sky, — of those highest white clouds that float like tresses of silver hair in the far blue, — of the sunrise gold and the rose-color of sunset, that always rest upon them most lovingly. But down deep in the heart of the great branches, you may hear something quite different, and not less sweet.

“Peep under my leaves,” sings the elm-tree, “out at the ends of my broadest branches. What hangs there so soft and gray? Who comes with a flash of wings and gleam of golden breast among the dark leaves, and sits above the gray hanging nest to sing his full sweet tune? Who worked there together so happily all the May-time, with gray honeysuckle fibres, twining the little nest, until there it hung securely over the road, bound and tied and woven firmly to the slender twigs, — so slender, that the squirrels even cannot creep down for the eggs, much less can Jack or Neddy, who are so fond of bird’s-nesting, ever hope to reach the home of our golden robin?

“There my leaves shelter him like a roof from rain and from sunshine. I rock the cradle when the father and mother are away, and the little ones cry, and in my softest tone I sing to them; yet they are never quite satisfied with me, but beat their wings, and stretch out their heads, and cannot be happy until they hear their father.

“The squirrel, who lives in the hole where the two great branches part, hears what I say, and curls up his tail, while he turns his bright eyes towards the swinging nest which he can never reach.”

Childe Hassam. Easthampton Elms in May. Etching on paper, 1925. Smithsonian American Art Museum and its Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C.

The fanning wind wafts across the road the voice of the old horse-chestnut, who also has a word to say about the bird’s-nests.

“When my blossoms were fresh white pyramids, came a swift flutter of wings about them one day, and a dazzlingly beautiful little bird thrust his long, delicate bill among the flowers; and while he held himself there in the air, without touching his tiny feet to twig or stem, but only by the swift fanning of long green-tinted wings, I offered him my best flowers for his breakfast, and bowed my great leaves as a welcome to him. The dear little thing had been here before, while yet the sticky brown buds which wrap up my leaves had not burst open to the warm sunshine. He and his mate, whose feather dress was not so fine as his, gathered the gum from the outside of the buds, and pulled the warm wool from the inside; and I could watch them, as they flew away to the maple yonder; for then the trees that stand between us had no leaves to hide the maple as they do now.

“Back and forth flew the birds, from the topmost maple-branch to my opening buds; and day by day I saw a little nest growing, very small and round, lined warmly with wool from my buds, and thatched all over the outside with bits of lichen, gray and green, to match what grew on the maple-branches about it; and this thatch was glued on with the gum from my brown buds. When it was finished, it was delicate enough for the cradle of a little princess; and the outside was so carefully matched to the tree by lichens that the sharpest eyes from below could not detect it. What a safe, snug home for the humming-birds!

“By the time the two tiny eggs were laid, I could no longer see the nest, for the thick foliage of other trees had built up a green wall between me and it. But for many days the mother-bird stayed away, and the father came alone to drink honey from my blossom cups; so I knew that the eggs were hatching under her warm folded wings; for I have seen such things before among my own branches in the robins’ nests and the bluebirds’.

Mannevillette Elihu Dearing Brown. Humming birds / from life & on stone. Lithograph, c. 1832. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.

“Now my flowers are all gone, and in their place the nuts are growing in their prickly balls. I have nothing to tempt the humming-bird, and he never visits me; only the yellow birds hop gayly from branch to branch, and the robins come sometimes.” And the horse-chestnut sighed, for he missed the humming-bird; and he flapped his great leaves in the very face of the linden-blossoms, and forgot to say, “Excuse me.” But the linden is now, and for many days, full of sweetness, and will not answer ungraciously even so careless a touch.

Yes, the linden is full of sweetness, and sends out the fragrance from his blossoms in through the chamber windows, and down upon the people who pass in the street below; and he tells, all the time, his story of how his pink-covered leaf-buds opened in the spring mornings, and unfolded the fresh green leaves, which were so tender and full of green juices that it was no wonder the mother-moth had thought the branches a good place whereon to lay her eggs; for, as soon as they should be all laid, she would die, and there would be no one to provide food for her babies when they should creep out.

So the nice mother-moth made a toilsome journey up my great trunk,” sung the linden, “and left her eggs where she knew the freshest green leaves, would be coming out by the time the young ones should leave the eggs.

Mary Nimmo Moran. Old Lindens — Near Easthampton. Etching on paper, 1885. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

“And they came out indeed, somewhat to my sorrow; for instead of being, like their mother, sober, well-behaved little moths, they were green canker-worms [1], and such hungry little things, that I really began to fear I should have not a whole leaf left upon me, when one day they spun for themselves fine silken ropes, and swung themselves down from leaf to leaf, and from branch to branch, and in a day or two were all gone.

“A little flaxen-haired girl sat on the broad doorstep at my feet, and caught the canker-worms in her white apron. She liked to see them hump up their backs and measure off the inches of her white checked apron with their little green bodies. And I, although I liked them well enough at first, was not sorry to lose them when they went. I heard the child’s mother telling her that they had come down to make for themselves beds in the earth, where they would sleep until the early spring, and wake to find themselves grown into moths just like their mothers who climbed up the tree to lay eggs. We shall see, when next spring comes, if that is so. Now since they went I have done my best to refresh my leaves and keep young and happy; and here are my sweet blossoms to prove that I have yet within me vigorous life.”

The elm-tree heard what the linden sung, and said, “Very true, very true: I too have suffered from the canker-worms; but I have yet leaves enough left for a beautiful shade, and the poor crawling things must surely eat something.” And the elm bowed gracefully to the linden, out of sympathy for him.

But the linden has heard the voices of the young robins who live in the nest among his highest boughs; and he must yet tell to the horse-chestnut how sad it was, the other day in the thunder-storm, when the wind upset the nest, and one little bird was thrown out and killed, while the father and mother flew about in the greatest distress, until Charley came, climbed the tree, and fitted the nest safely back into its place.

George Elbert Burr. Old Pine and Cedar. Etching on paper, c. 1923. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

How much the trees have to say! And there is the pine, who was born and brought up in the woods: he is always whispering secrets of the great forest, and of the river beside which he grew. The other trees can’t always understand him; he is the poet among them, and a poet is always suspected of knowing a little more than any one else.

Sometime I may try to tell you something of what he says; but here ends the talk of the trees that stood in the village street.

Andrews, Jane. “The talk of the trees that stand in the village street.” Our Young Folks 4, no. 10 (October 1868): 598-600.

[1] Cankerworm larvae are commonly called inchworms. They start as eggs deposited on trees, transform into pupae in the soil, and emerge as moths. Significant cankerworm feeding over several years can cause trees to lose all their leaves, weakening and killing the branches.

Contexts

This article appeared on the cusp of a shift in where people lived in the U.S., as the late 19th century brought rapid growth of cities. While most people still lived in rural areas, the expansion of city life helped shape many aspects of modern life.

Resources for Further Study
  • Urban Forests by Jill Jonnes considers a historical context for how trees have been integrated into U.S. cities.
  • Arnoldia, the quarterly magazine of Harvard University’s Arnold Arboretum, contributes to an ongoing conversation about the importance of trees.
Contemporary Connections

Several modern organizations work to promote and support maintaining and increasing the presence of trees in cities:

Duke University ecologist Renata Kamakura shares their insights about helping trees survive in cities.

Categories
1860s Forests Short Story Trees

How Quercus Alba Went to Explore the Under-World, and What Came of It

How Quercus Alba Went to Explore the Under-World, and What Came of It

By Jane Andrews
Annotations by Josh benjamin
Samuel Colman. “Oak Wood, Montauk, New York.” Graphite, pen and brown ink, brush and watercolor and white gouache on gray-green wove paper, 1880. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, NY.

QUERCUS ALBA lay on the ground, looking up at the sky. He lay in a little, brown, rustic cradle which would be pretty for any baby, but was specially becoming to his shining, bronzed complexion; for although his name, Alba, is the Latin word for white, he did not belong to the white race. He was trying to play with his cousins, Coccinea and Rubra, but they were two or three yards away from him, and not one of the three dared to roll any distance for fear of rolling out of his cradle; so it was n’t a lively play, as you may easily imagine. Presently, Rubra, who was a sturdy little fellow, hardly afraid of anything, summoned courage to roll full half a yard, and, having come within speaking distance, began to tell how his elder brother had, that very morning, started on the grand underground tour, which to the Quercus family is what going to Europe would be for you and me. Coccinea thought the account very stupid, said his brothers had all been, and he should go too sometime he supposed, and, giving a little shrug of his shoulders which set his cradle rocking, fell asleep in the very face of his visitors. Not so Alba; this was all news to him, — grand news. He was young and inexperienced, and, moreover, full of roving fancies; so he lifted his head as far as he dared, nodded delightedly as Rubra described the departure, and, when his cousin ceased speaking, asked eagerly, “And what will he do there ?”

Original illustration from Our Young Folks, p. 641.

“Do?” said Rubra, — “do ? why, he will do just what everybody else does who goes on the grand tour. What a foolish fellow you are to ask such a question!”

Now this was no answer at all, as you see plainly, and yet little Alba was quite abashed by it, and dared not push the question further for fear of displaying his ignorance; never thinking that we children are not born with our heads full of information on all subjects, and that the only way to fill them is to push our questions until we are utterly satisfied with the answers; and that no one has reason to feel ashamed of ignorance which is not now his own fault, but will soon become so if he hushes his questions for fear of showing it.

Here Alba made his first mistake. There is only one way to correct a mistake of this kind, and it is so excellent a way that it even brings you out at the end wiser than the other course could have done. Alba, I am happy to say, resolved at once on this course. “If,” said he, “Rubra does not choose to tell me about the grand tour, I will go and see for myself.” It was a brave resolve for a little fellow like him. He lost no time in preparing to carry it out; but, on pushing against the gate that led to the underground road, he found that the frost had fastened it securely, and he must wait for a warmer day. In the mean time, afraid to ask any more questions, he yet kept his ears open to gather any scraps of information that might be useful for his journey.

Listening ears can always hear; and Alba very soon began to learn, from the old trees overhead, from the dry rustling leaves around him, and from the little chipping-birds [1] that chatted together in the sunshine. Some said the only advantage of the grand tour was to make one a perfect and accomplished gentleman; others, that all the useful arts were taught abroad, and no one who wished to improve the world in which he lived would stay at home another year. Old grandfather Rubra, standing tall and grand, and stretching his knotty arms, as if to give force to his words, said, “Of all arts, the art of building is the noblest, and that can only be learned by those who take the grand tour; therefore all my boys have been sent long ago, and already many of my grandsons have followed them.”

Frank Lauder. “Red Oak Tree.” Autochrome photograph, 1933. Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, MO.

Then there was a whisper among the leaves: “All very well, old Rubra, but of your sons or grandsons ever come back from the grand tour?

There was no answer; indeed, the leaves had n’t spoken loudly enough for the old gentleman to hear, for he was known to have a fiery temper, and it was scarcely safe to offend him; but the little brown chipping-birds said, one to another, “No, no, no, they never came back! they never came back!”

All this sent a chill through Alba’s heart, but he still held to his purpose; and in the night a warm and friendly rain melted the frozen gateway, and he boldly rolled out of his cradle forever, and, slipping through the portal, was lost to sight.

His mother looked for her baby; his brothers and cousins rolled over and about in search for him. Rubra began to feel sorry for the last scornful words he had said, and would have petted his little cousin with all his heart, if he could only have had him once again; but Alba was never again seen by his old friends and companions.

“How dark it is here, and how difficult for one to make his way through the thick atmosphere!” so thought little Alba, as he pushed and pushed slowly into the soft mud. Presently, a busy hum sounded all about him, and, becoming accustomed to the darkness, he could see little forms moving swiftly and industriously to and fro.

You children who live above, and play about on the hillsides and in the woods, have no idea what is going on all the while under your feet; how the dwarfs and the fairies are working there, weaving moss carpets and grass-blades, forming and painting flowers and scarlet mushrooms, tending and nursing all manner of delicate things which have yet to grow strong enough to push up and see the outside life, and learn to bear its cold winds and rejoice in its sunshine.

While Alba was seeing all this, he was still struggling on, but very slowly; for first he ran against the strong root of an old tree, then knocked his head upon a sharp stone, and finally, bruised and sore, tired, and quite in despair, he sighed a great sigh, and declared he could go no further. At that two odd little beings sprang to his side, – the one brown as the earth itself, with eyes like diamonds for brightness, and deft little fingers, cunning in all works of skill. Pulling off his wisp of a cap, and making a grotesque little bow, he asked, “Will you take a guide for the under-world tour?” “That I will,” said Alba, “for I no longer find myself able to move a step.” “Ha, ha!” laughed the dwarf, “of course you can’t move in that great body, the ways are too narrow; you must come out of yourself before you can get on in this journey. Put out your foot now, and I will show you where to step.” “Out of myself !” cried Alba, “why that is to die! My foot, did you say? I have n’t any feet; I was born in a cradle, and always lived in it until now, and could never do anything but rock and roll.”

“Ha, ha ha!” again laughed the dwarf, “ hear him talk! This is the way with all of them. No feet, does he say? Why, he has a thousand, if he only knew it; hands too, more than he can count. Ask him, sister, and see what he will say to you.”

With that a soft little voice said cheerfully, “Give me your hand, that I may lead you on the upward part of your journey; for, poor little fellow! it is indeed true that you do not know how to live out of your cradle, and we must show you the way.”

Encouraged by this kindly speech, Alba turned a little towards the speaker, and was about to say (as his mother had long ago taught him that he should in all difficulties) “I’ll try,” when a little cracking noise startled the whole company, and, hardly knowing what he did, Alba thrust out, through a slit in his shiny brown skin, a little foot reaching downward to follow the dwarf’s lead, and a little hand, extending upward, quickly clasped by that of the fairy, who stood smiling and lovely in her fair green garments, with a tender, tiny grass-blade binding back her golden hair. O, what a thrill went through Alba, as he felt this new possession! a hand and a foot, a thousand such, had they not said ? What it all meant he could only wonder; but the one real possession was at least certain, and in that he began to feel that all things were possible.

William N. Buckner, Jr. “Leaves.” Oil stick on paper, 1909. Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum, Washington, D.C.

And now shall we see where the dwarf led him, and where the fairy? and what was actually done in the underground tour?

The dwarf had need of his bright eyes and his skilful hands; for the soft, tiny foot intrusted to him was a mere baby that had to find its way through a strange dark world, and, what was more, it must not only be guided, but also fed and tended carefully; so the bright eyes go before, and the brown fingers dig out a road-way, and the foot that has learned to trust its guide utterly follows on. There is no longer any danger; he runs against no rocks, he loses his way among no tangled roots ; and the hard earth seems to open gently before him, leading him to the fields where his own best food lies, and to hidden springs of sweet fresh water.

Do you wonder when I say the foot must be fed? Are n’t your feet fed? To be sure, your feet have no mouths of their own; but does n’t the mouth in your face eat for your whole body, hands and feet, ears and eyes, and all the rest? else how do they grow? The only difference here between you and Alba is that his foot has mouths of its own, and as it wanders on through the earth, and finds anything good for food, eats both for itself and for the rest of the body; for I must tell you that, as the little foot progresses, it does not take the body with it, but only grows longer and longer and longer, until, while one end remains at home, fastened to the body, the other end has travelled a distance such as would be counted miles by the atoms of people who live in the under-world. And, moreover, the foot no longer goes on alone; others have come, by tens, even by hundreds, to join it, and Alba begins to understand what the dwarf meant by thousands. Thus the feet travel on, running some to this side, some to that; here digging through a bed of clay, and there burying themselves in a soft sand-hill; taking a mouthful of carbon here and of nitrogen there. But what are these two strange articles of food? Nothing at all like bread and butter, you think. Different, indeed, they seem; but you will one day learn that bread and butter are made in part of these very same things, and they are just as useful to Alba as your breakfast, dinner, and supper are to you; for just as bread and butter, and other food, build your body, so carbon and nitrogen are going to build his; and you will presently see what a fine, large, strong body they can make; then, perhaps, you will be better able to understand what they are.

Shall we leave the feet to travel their own way for a while, and see where the fairy has led the little hand?

Frank Lauder. “Scarlet Oak.” Autochrome photograph, 1937. Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, MO.

QUERCUS ALBA’S NEW SIGHT OF THE UPPER-WORLD.

It was a soft, helpless, little baby hand. Its folded fingers lay listlessly in the fairy’s gentle grasp. “Now we will go up,” she said. He had thought he was going down, and he had heard the chipping-birds say he would never come back again; but he had no will to resist the gentle motion, which seemed, after all, to be exactly what he wanted; so he presently found himself lifted out of the dark earth, feeling the sunshine again, and stirred by the breeze that rustled the dry leaves that lay all about him. Here again were all his old companions, — the chipping-birds, his cousins, old grandfather Rubra, and, best of all, his dear mother; but the odd thing about it all was that nobody seemed to know him; even his mother, although she stretched her arms towards him, turned her head away, looking here and there for her lost baby, and never seeing how he stood gazing up into her face. Now he began to understand why the chipping-birds said, “They never came back! they never came back!” for they truly came in so new a form that none of their old friends recognized them.

Everything that has hands wants to work, — that is, hands are such excellent tools that no one who is the happy possessor of a pair is quite happy until he uses them; so Alba began to have a longing desire to build a stem and lift himself up among his neighbors. But what should he build with? Here the little feet answered promptly, “You want to build, — do you? Well, here is carbon, the very best material; there is nothing like it for walls; it makes the most beautiful, firm wood; wait a minute, and we will send up some that we have been storing for your use.”

And the busy hands go to work, and the child grows day by day. His body and limbs are brown now, but his hands of a fine shining green. And, having learned the use of carbon, these busy hands undertake to gather it for themselves out of the air about them, which is a great storehouse full of many materials that our eyes cannot see. And he has also learned that to grow and to build are indeed the same thing; for his body is taking the form of a strong young tree; his branches are spreading for a roof over the heads of a hundred delicate flowers, making a home for many a bushy-tailed squirrel and pleasant-voiced wood-bird; for, you see, whoever builds cannot build for himself alone; all his neighbors have the benefit of his work, and all enjoy it together.

What at the first was so hard to attempt became grand and beautiful in the doing; and little Alba, instead of serving merely for a squirrel’s breakfast, as he might have done had he not bravely ventured on his journey, stands before us a noble tree, which is to live a hundred years or more.

Do you want to know what kind of a tree?

Well, Lillie, who studies Latin, will tell you that Quercus means oak. And now can you tell me what Alba’s rustic cradle was, and who were his cousins Rubra and Coccinea? [2]

P. Freeman Heim. “White Oak.” Photograph, 1971. National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD.
Andrews, Jane. “How Quercus alba went to explore the under-world, and what came of it.” Our Young Folks 4, no. 11 (November 1868): 641-45.

[1] The chipping-bird is likely the chipping sparrow (Spizella passerina), which is common throughout much of North America.

[2] Quercus alba is the white oak, Quercus rubra is the northern red oak, and Quercus coccinea is the scarlet or red oak.

Contexts

In 1897, the Organic Administration Act established much of the national forests in the U.S., with the Weeks Law of 1911 creating more through the restoration of deforested lands. Increased logging for building materials led to additional laws in the 1960s and 70s that would help further protect forests. The U.S. Forest Service’s approaches have not been without controversy, however, and some areas have turned to Native American forest management knowledge to improve the health and longevity of our forest resources.

Resources for Further Study
  • The U.S. Department of Agriculture provides field guides to the native oak species in Eastern North America, which includes the three species mentioned in this story.
  • The Arbor Day Foundation has plentiful tree conservation and education resources, including a statement about the November 2004 naming of the oak as the U.S. national tree.
Contemporary Connections

Margaret Roach’s piece in the New York Times about planting oak trees describes some of the benefits the trees provide for the environment.

Categories
1910s African American Poem Seasons Trees

Hope

Hope

Mary Betsy Totten. Rising Sun. Quilt, 1825-1835, National Museum of American History. Gift of Mrs. Marvel Mildred Matthes. Public domain.
By Georgia Douglas Johnson
Annotations by Rene Marzuk
Frail children of sorrow, dethroned by a hue,
The shadows are flecked by the rose sifting through,
The world has its motion, all things pass away,
No night is omnipotent, there must be day,

The oak tarries long in the depth of the seed,[1]
But swift is the season of nettle and weed.
Abide yet awhile in the mellowing shade
And rise with the hour for which you were made.

The cycle of seasons, the tidals of man,
Revolve in the coil of an infinite plan,
We move to the rhythm of ages long done,
And each has an hour--to dwell in the sun!
JOHNSON, GEORGIA DOUGLAS. “HOPE.” THE CRISIS’ 14, NO. 6 (OCTOBER 1917): 293.

[1] Oak acorns exhibit dormancy, which means they germinate slowly or not at all after they drop from the tree. These seeds can remain inactive on the ground from August or September of any given year until the next spring.

Contexts

Starting in 1912, the October issues of The Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP, were dedicated to children. A typical edition of these children’s numbers would contain a special editorial piece and two or three literary works specifically for children, while still including the serious pieces about contemporary issues with a focus on race that The Crisis was known for. These October numbers were sprinkled with children’s photographs sent in by the readers.

In his first editorial for the Children’s number in 1912, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote that “there is a sense in which all numbers and all words of a magazine of ideas myst point to the child—to that vast immortality and wide sweep and infinite possibility which the child represents.”

The success of The Crisis’ children’s number led to the standalone The Brownies’ Book, a monthly magazine for African American children that circulated from January 1920 to December 1921 under the editorship of Du Bois, Augustus Granville Dill, and Jessie Fauset.

Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:

flecked: Of darkness: Dappled with bright spots. Of the sky: Dappled with clouds. Of clouds: Cast like flecks over the sky.

nettle: Any of various plants with inconspicuous green flowers and (usually) stinging hairs that constitute the genus Urtica (family Urticaceae); esp. the Eurasian plant U. dioica, which has strongly toothed ovate leaves and is an abundant weed of damp waste ground, roadsides, etc. (also called (common) stinging nettle). Also (usually with distinguishing word): any of various plants of other genera and families with stinging hairs.

omnipotent: All-powerful, having absolute power. Also: having unlimited or great authority, force, or influence; extremely strong.

Resources for Further Study
Contemporary Connections

In her 2017 poetry book One Last Word: Wisdom from the Harlem Renaissance, poet Nikki Grimes uses Georgia Douglas Johnson’s “Hope” to create a golden shovel poem titled “On Bully Patrol.” Golden shovel poetry is a poetic form created by Terrance Hayes in 2010 that uses each word of an existing poem as the last word of the successive lines of a new poem.

Categories
1940s African American Poem Trees Wind

Wind-Stirred Trees

Wind-Stirred Trees

By Effie Lee Newsome
Annotations by Karen Kilcup
Original 1940 woodcut for “Wind-Stirred Trees,”
by Lois Mailou Jones. Public Domain.
A tall, proud poplar’s like the ocean[1]
In tossing sound and wind-swept motion.
There’s nothing more like voice of sea
Than roaring billows of a tree,
And one things of the foam-fringed tide
As poplar leaves wave their white side.
Newsome, Effie Lee. “Wind-Stirred Trees.” Gladiola Garden: Poems of Outdoors and Indoors for Second Grade Readers. Washington, DC: Associated Publishers, 1940, 123.

[1] Numerous types of poplar trees appear across the United States. As Newsome notes, their leaves quiver in the wind, and many have white undersides. One of the most famous types is the quaking aspen.

Contexts

Newsome worked among the many celebrated writers of the Harlem Renaissance, who included Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, James Weldon Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston, and Anne Spencer, many of them poets. Among her noteworthy contributions to that movement was her writing and editing for W. E. B. Du Bois’s magazine, The Crisis, the official publication of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). As John Claborn points out, Du Bois’s political goals embraced the idea of access to natural spaces, and the magazine featured environmental writing by such notable authors as Arna Bontemps, Claude McKay, and Hughes. Newsome contributed to and edited “The Little Page” (“Whimsies for the Younger Folk”), where much of her work emphasized nature. This poem, like many others in The Envious Lobster, whimsically enacts a natural history lesson, while it encourages children’s imagination.

Resources for Further Study
Contemporary Connections

Anonymous. Reading of Newsome’s poem, “The Bronze Legacy.” The illustrations for Gladiola Garden were done by prominent Black artist Loïs Mailou Jones (1905-1998).

Johnston, Amber O’Neal. “African American Poetry: Effie Lee Newsome. Heritage Mom blog.

“Fast-Growing Poplars Provide Solutions for Both Energy and Pollution Problems.” US Forest Service Northern Research Station 19 (Winter 2013).

Categories
1890s Life and Death Poem Seasons Trees

Among the Leaves

Among the Leaves

By Ethelwyn Wetherald
Annotations by Karen Kilcup
Hans Andersen Brendekilde, Wooded Path in Autumn. Oil painting, c. 1902. Public Domain.
The near sky, the under sky,
    The low sky that I love!
I lie where fallen leaves lie,
    With a leafy sky above;	
And draw the colored leaves nigh,
And push the withered leaves by,
And feel the woodland heart upon me
	brooding like a dove.

The bright sky, the shifting sky,
    The sky that Autumn weaves!
I see where scarlet leaves fly
    The sky the wind bereaves;
I see the ling’ring leaves die,
I hear the dying leaves sigh,
And breathe the woodland breath made
	sweet of all her withered leaves.
Wetherald, Ethelwyn. “Among the Leaves.” Youth’s Companion (October 17, 1895): 490.

Contexts

Based in Boston, the long-lived Youth’s Companion was at one time among America’s most popular children’s magazines. Famous writers such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, Kate Chopin, Jack London, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Emily Dickinson, and Booker T. Washington all published in its well-thumbed pages. Among its avid readers was a young Robert Frost. It helped popularize The Pledge of Allegiance, publishing it in its September 8, 1892 issue.

Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary

nigh: near

bereaves: to rob; to deprive of anything valued; to leave destitute, orphaned, or widowed [here, by implication, to sadden]

Resources for Further Study
  • “Category: Youth’s Companion.” Wikimedia Commons. This page has some illustrations from the magazine.
  • Chris [last name unknown]. “The Youth’s Companion.” This blog has numerous issues, with pictures. The most recent blog pages feature the 1920s.
  • Pflieger, Pat. “Youth’s Companion (1827-1929).” Nineteenth-Century American Children and What They Read.
  • “The Youth’s Companion.” The Online Books Page. University of Pennsylvania. You can read other selections from the magazine here through HathiTrust (the interface is not particularly user-friendly).
Contemporary Connections

Readers today still value what original readers often called “The Companion.” See Vintage American Ways (a site with some errors, including the magazine’s dates).

“A History of The Youth’s Companion and Pledge of Allegiance with collectors’ notes” on the Collecting Old Magazines site highlights how the issues that contain Emily Dickinson’s poetry and The Pledge of Allegiance are valuable. (this site also has errors, and it misleadingly presents the magazine as “boring.”)

Categories
1940s African American Poem Seasons Trees

Quilting Bee

Quilting Bee

By Effie Lee Newsome
Annotations by Karen Kilcup
Modern pieced fabric quilt. Courtesy QuiltWoman.com.
Sometimes I play that in the spring
The woods get scalloped scraps of green,
And set the trees to gay quilting,[1]
Making a merry, gorgeous scene,
A sight I like to look up to—
The sky helps piece the quilt with blue.

Then there’s a change when autumn’s back,
The green scraps turn to gold and red.
The dark twigs stitch them still with black,
But there’re more blue scraps overhead,
And soon the whole quilt’s all blue-gray—
The brighter scraps get blown away.

And now I play each empty tree
Is left there from the quilting bee.
They can’t get home—so bent and old
Out there with bare hands in the cold
To wait for spring and gay green scraps
To fill their old lean hands and laps.
Newsome, Effie Lee. “Quilting Bee.” Gladiola Garden: Poems of Outdoors and Indoors for Second Grade Readers. Washington, DC: Associated Publishers, 1940, 125.

[1] A quilting bee is a traditional community activity where a group of people gather to sew together squares (or other pieces) of fabric to form a quilt. The bee would also help sew together the top (pieced) section, a filling (such as a sheet of cotton batting), and a backing fabric. Newsome imagines the sky and trees as pieces in a quilt that her poem stitches together. Unlike a cloth quilt, nature’s “quilt” changes as the seasons change.

Contexts

Newsome worked among the many celebrated writers of the Harlem Renaissance, who included Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, James Weldon Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston, and Anne Spencer, many of them poets. Among her noteworthy contributions to that movement was her writing and editing for W. E. B. Du Bois’s magazine, The Crisis, the official publication of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). As John Claborn points out, Du Bois’s political goals embraced the idea of access to natural spaces, and the magazine featured environmental writing by such notable authors as Arna Bontemps, Claude McKay, and Hughes. Newsome contributed to and edited “The Little Page” (“Whimsies for the Younger Folk”), where much of her work emphasized nature. This poem, like many others in The Envious Lobster, uses the community activity of quilting to teach a natural history lesson.

Resources for Further Study
Contemporary Connections

Anonymous. Reading of Newsome’s poem, “The Bronze Legacy.” The illustrations for Gladiola Garden were done by prominent Black artist Loïs Mailou Jones (1905-1998).

Johnston, Amber O’Neal. “African American Poetry: Effie Lee Newsome. Heritage Mom blog.

One of the best-known quilting groups today is the community of Gee’s Bend, Alabama.

Contemporary fabric quilt. Artist Unknown.
Categories
1900s African American Poem Trees

The Haunted Oak

The Haunted Oak[1]

By Paul Laurence Dunbar
Annotations by Rene Marzuk
American Forestry Ass’n, Live Oak, Jacksonville, Fla. Glass negative, 1919 or 1920, Library of Congress. Public Domain. 
Pray, why are you so bare, so bare,
     O bough of the old oak tree?
And why, when I go through the shade you throw
     Runs a shudder over me?

My leaves were as green as the best, I trow,
     And the sap ran free in my veins,
But I saw in the moonlight dim and weird,
     A guiltless victim's pains.

I bent me down to hear his sigh,
     And I shook with his gurgling moan,
And I trembled sore when they rode away,
     And left him here alone.

They'd charged him with the old, old crime,[2]
     And set him fast in jail;
O why does the dog howl all night long?
     And why does the night wind wail?

He prayed his prayer, and he swore his oath,
     And he raised his hands to the sky;
But the beat of hoofs smote on his ear,
     And the steady tread drew nigh.

Who is it rides by night, by night,
     Over the moonlit road?
What is the spur that keeps the pace?
     What is the galling goad?

And now they beat at the prison door,
     “Ho, keeper, do not stay!
We are friends of him whom you hold within,
     And we fain would take him away

From those who ride fast on our heels,
     With mind to do him wrong;
They have no care for his innocence,
     And the rope they bear is strong.”

They have fooled the jailer with lying words,
     They have fooled the man with lies;
The bolts unbar, the locks are drawn,
     And the great door open flies.

And now they have taken him from the jail,
     And hard and fast they ride;
And the leader laughs low down in his throat,
     As they halt my trunk beside.

O, the judge he wore a mask of black,
     And the doctor one of white,
And the minister, with his oldest son,
     Was curiously bedight.

O foolish man, why weep you now?
     ’Tis but a little space,
And the time will come when these shall dread
     The memory of your face.

I feel the rope against my bark,
     And the weight of him in my grain;
I feel in the throe of his final woe,
     The touch of my own last pain.

And never more shall leaves come forth
     On a bough that bears the ban;
I am burned with dread, I am dried and dead,
     From the curse of a guiltless man.

And ever the judge rides by, rides by,
     And goes to hunt the deer,
And ever another rides his soul,
     In the guise of a mortal fear.

And ever the man, he rides me hard,
     And never a night stays he;
For I feel his curse as a haunted bough,
     On the trunk of a haunted tree.
DUNBAR, PAUL LAURENCE. “THE HAUNTED OAK,” IN THE DUNBAR SPEAKER AND ENTERTAINER, ED. ALICE MOORE DUNBAR-NELSON, 91-93. NAPERVILLE, ILL: J. L. NICHOLS & CO., 1920.

[1] According to Dunbar’s friend Edward F. Arnold, Dunbar wrote “The Haunted Oak” after hearing the story of a lynching that took place in Alabama many years before. In Arnold’s retelling, “the “night riders” took him [the victim, who had been wrongly accused of rape] from jail and strung him up on a limb of a giant oak that stood by the side of the road. In a few weeks thereafter the leaves on this limb turned yellow and dropped off, and the bough itself gradually withered and died while the other branches of the tree grew and flourished. For years in that section this tree was known as the “haunted oak.”

[2] Based on Edward F. Arnold’s account, the poem’s reference to “the old, old-crime” would be rape. See above.

Contexts

“The Haunted Oak” appeared previously in Dunbar’s 1903 collection Lyrics of Love and Laughter. It was also included in The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar (1913).

The Dunbar Speaker and Entertainer‘s dedication reads: “To the children of the race which is herein celebrated, this book is dedicated, that they may read and learn about their own people.” In the foreword, Leslie Pinckney Hill, an African American educator, writer, and community leader who graduated from Harvard University in 1903, criticizes the one-sidedness of prevailing reading courses: “In vain may you search their pages—those pages upon which all our reading has been founded—for anything other than a patronizing view of that vast, brooding world of colored folk—yellow, black and brown—which comprises by far the largest portion of the human family.” Hill further writes that Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s book seeks to prove “that the white man has no fine quality, either by heart or mind, which is not shared by his black brother.”

Think of reading this poem out loud. Elocution (or public speaking) was a highly valued and widely taught skill in nineteenth-century America. In her introduction to the Dunbar Speaker, Alice Dunbar-Nelson offers some advice: “Before you begin to learn anything to recite, first read it over and find out if it fires you with enthusiasm. If it does, make it a part of yourself, put yourself in the place of the speaker whose words you are memorizing, get on fire with the thought, the sentiment, the emotion-then throw yourself into it in your endeavor to make others feel as you feel, see as you see, understand what you understand. Lose yourself, free yourself from physical consciousness, forget that those in front of you are a part of an audience, think of them as some persons whom you must make understand what is thrilling you–and you will be a great speaker.”

Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:

bedight: To equip, furnish, apparel, array, bedeck.

fain: To be delighted or glad, rejoice.

galling: Chafing, irritating or harassing physically. Irritating, offensive to the mind or spirit.

ho: An exclamation to attract attention.

nigh: Denoting approach to a place, thing, or person.

trow: To trust, have confidence in, believe (a person or thing).

Resources for Further Study
Contemporary Connections

In a moving personal essay, American poet Glenis Redmond explores how the history of lynching complicates her relationship with the Southern landscape: “The legacy of lynching is woven into the fabric of America. Used as a tool of fear and a widespread form of control after blacks gained freedom from slavery, it has cast its long shadow across the country. Trees, though benign in themselves, stand at the center of this history, and they bear that imprint.”

Categories
1850s Birds Short Story Trees Wild animals

The Old Eagle Tree

The Old Eagle Tree

By John Todd
Annotations by Mary Miller/KK
John James Audubon. “White-Headed Eagle,” from Birds of America (1827-38), plate 31. Audubon.com.

In a distant field, stood a large tulip-tree, [1] apparently of a century’s growth, and one of the most gigantic. It looked like the father of the surrounding forest. [2] A single tree, of huge dimensions, standing all alone, is a sublime object.

            On the top of this tree, an old eagle, commonly called the “Fishing-Eagle” had built her nest every year, for many years, and undisturbed had raised her young. What is remarkable, as she procured her food from the ocean, this tree stood full ten miles from the sea-shore. It had long been known as the “Old Eagle-Tree.”

            On a warm, sunny day, the workmen were hoeing corn in an adjoining field. At a certain hour of the day, the old eagle was known to set off for the sea-side, to gather food for her young. As she this day returned with a large fish in her claws, the work-men surrounded the tree, and by yelling and hooting, and throwing stones, so scared the poor bird, that she dropped her fish, and they carried it off in triumph.

            The men soon dispersed, but Joseph sat down under a bush near by, to watch and to bestow unavailing pity. The bird soon returned to her nest, without food. The eaglets at once set up a cry for food so shrill, so clear, and so clamorous, that the boy was greatly moved.

            The parent-bird seemed to try to soothe them; but their appetites were too keen, and it was all in vain. She then perched herself on a limb near them and looked down into the nest with a look that seemed to say, “I know not what to do next.”

            Her indecision was but momentary; again she poised herself, uttered one or two sharp notes, as if telling them to “lie still,” balanced her body, spread her wings, and was away again for the sea!

            Joseph was determined to see the result. His eye followed her till she grew small, smaller, a mere speck in the sky, and then disappeared. What boy has not thus watched the flight of the bird of his country?

            She was gone nearly two hours, about double her usual time for a voyage, when she again returned, on a slow, weary wing, flying uncommonly low, in order to have a heavier atmosphere to sustain her, with another fish in her talons.

            On nearing the field, she made a circuit round it, to see if her enemies were again there. Finding the coast clear, she once more reached the tree, drooping, faint, and weary, and evidently nearly exhausted. Again the eaglets set up their cry, which was soon hushed by the distribution of a dinner, such as, save the cooking, a king might admire.

            “Glorious bird!” cried the boy, “what a spirit! Other birds can fly more swiftly, others can sing more sweetly, others scream more loudly; but what other bird, when persecuted and robbed, when weary, when discouraged, when so far from the sea, would do this?

            “Glorious bird! I will learn a lesson from thee to-day. I will never forget, hereafter, that when the spirit is determined, it can do almost any thing. Others would have drooped, and hung the head, and mourned over the cruelty of man, and sighed over the wants of the nestlings; but thou, by at once recovering the loss, hast forgotten all.

            “I will learn of thee, noble bird! I will remember this. I will set my mark high. I will try to do something, and to be something in the world; I will never yield to discouragements.”

TODD, JOHN.  “THE OLD EAGLE TREE.” IN MCGUFFEY’S NEW FOURTH ECLECTIC READER, ED. WILLIAM HOLMES MONTGOMERY, 86-88. NEW YORK: WILSON, HINKLE, & CO., 1857.

[1] Tulip trees, also called tulip poplars, are native to the Eastern United States. Their spring blooms are attractive to bees. They are fast growing, reaching up to 20 feet tall and almost as wide in less than 10 years, ultimately ending up around 70-80 feet tall and 50 feet wide.

[2] Recent research confirms that there are “parent” trees in the forest, and that trees communicate with themselves and other elements of the forest ecology. Two great books on this topic are Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest by Suzanne Simard, and The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben.

Contexts

School readers were an important tool in early America, especially in less settled regions where teachers were scarce. McGuffey published six readers, each advancing in level of difficulty, designed for students in kindergarten through high school. They provided a scripted tool to enable even untrained teachers to teach the basics in reading, writing, speaking and science, and to reinforce the predominant, mostly Christian values of American society. The pedagogical method was to have students memorize the materials and recite them in the classroom.

In his biography, John Todd: The Story of His Life Told Mainly by Himself, Todd relates an experience that led him to write the story of “The Old Eagle Tree.” He credits the lesson he learned from the eagle for his lifelong determination to do the right thing and to succeed.

“The Old Eagle Tree” is included in McGuffey’s Fourth Eclectic Reader, published in 1857. The McGuffey series of readers were used as instructional textbooks, primarily for reading, writing, articulation, and character building. The books include prose and poetry along with guidance for teachers. McGuffey’s Readers draw from a wide range of literary sources, including the Bible, and emphasize American writers and American values common between 1836 and 1920.

Resources for Further Study
Contemporary Connections

In The Old Eagle Tree a young boy learns the lesson of persistence and respect for nature. Today, many environmental educators emphasize that continuing exposure to nature, starting at an early age, is essential to raising environmentally responsible adults. Many schools now integrate environmental programs into their curriculums. The State of North Carolina has made a commitment to include environmental education in the curriculum for all K-12 students to capitalize on “children’s natural curiosity about animals, plants and other elements of nature.” The North Carolina Environmental Education Plan includes a quote from Dr. David Orr, who says, “We often forget that all education is environmental education — by what we include or exclude, we teach the young that they are part of or apart from the natural world. An economist, for example, who fails to connect our economic life with that of ecosystems and the biosphere has taught an environmental lesson all right, but one that is dead wrong. Our goal as educators ought to be to help students understand their implicatedness in the world and to honor mystery.”

Categories
1880s Short Story Sketch Trees

Vegetable Clothing

Vegetable Clothing

By C. J. Russell
Annotations by Mary Miller/KK
King Charles’s Vegetable Necktie. Original illustration
by D.C. Beard from St. Nicholas Magazine, 13, no. 2
May – October 1886), 524.

About two hundred years ago the governor of the island of Jamaica, Sir Thomas Lynch, sent to King Charles II. of England a vegetable necktie, and a very good necktie it was, although it had grown on a tree and had not been altered since it was taken from the tree. It was as soft and white and delicate as lace, and it is not surprising that the King should have expressed his doubts when he was told that the beautiful fabric had grown on a tree in almost the exact condition in which he saw it. It had been stretched a little, and that was all.

But if King Charles was astonished to learn that neckties grew on trees in Jamaica, what must have been the feelings of a stranger traveling in Central America, on being told that mosquito-nets grew on trees in that country? He had complained to his host that the mosquitoes had nearly eaten him up the night before, and had been told in response that he should have a new netting put over his bed.

Satisfied with this statement, the traveler was turning away, but his attention was arrested by his host’s calmly continuing, “in fact, we are going to strip a tree anyhow, because there is to be a wedding on the estate, and we wish to have a dress ready for the bride.”

“You don’t mean,” said the traveler incredulously, “that mosquito-netting and bridal dresses grow on trees, do you?”

“That is just what I mean,” replied his host.

“All right,” said the stranger, who fancied a joke was being attempted at his expense, “let me see you gather the fruit and I will believe you.”

“Certainly,” was the answer; “follow the men, and you will see that I speak the exact truth.”

Still looking for some jest, the stranger followed the two men who were to pluck the singular fruit, and stood by when they stopped at a rather small tree, bearing thick, glossy-green leaves, but nothing else which the utmost effort of the imagination could convert into the netting or the wedding garments. The tree was about twenty feet high and six inches in diameter, and its bark looked much like that of a birch-tree.

“Is this the tree?” asked the stranger.

“Yes, señor,” answered one of the men, with a smile.

“I don’t see the mosquito-netting nor the wedding-dress,” said the stranger, “and I can’t see any joke either.”

“If the señor will wait a few minutes he will see all that was promised, and more too,” was the reply. “He will see that this tree can bear not only mosquito-netting and wedding-dresses, but fish-nets and neck-scarfs, mourning crape [1] or bridal veils.”

The tree was without more ado cut down. Three strips of bark, each about six inches wide and eight feet long, were taken from the trunk and thrown into a stream of water. Then each man took a strip while it was still in the water, and with the point of his knife separated a thin layer of the inner bark from one end of the strip. This layer was then taken in the fingers and gently pulled, whereupon it came away in an even sheet of the entire width and length of the strip of bark. Twelve sheets were thus taken from each strip of bark, and thrown into the water.

A light broke in upon the stranger’s mind. Without a doubt these strips were to be sewn together into one sheet. The plan seemed a good one and the fabric thus formed might do, he thought, if no better cloth could be had.

The men were not through yet, however, for when each strip of bark had yielded its twelve sheets, each sheet was taken from the water and gradually stretched sidewise. The spectator could hardly believe his eyes. The sheet broadened and broadened until from a close piece of material six inches wide, it became a filmy cloud of delicate lace, over three feet in width. The astonished gentleman was forced to confess that no human-made loom ever turned out lace which could surpass in snowy whiteness and gossamer-like delicacy that product of nature.

The natural lace is not so regular in formation as the material called illusion [2], so much worn by ladies in summer; but it is as soft and white, and will bear washing, which is not true of illusion. In Jamaica and Central America, this wonderful lace is put to all the uses mentioned by the native to our traveler, and to more uses besides. In fact, among the poorer people it supplies the place of manufactured cloth, which they can not afford to buy; and the wealthier classes do not by any means scorn it for ornamental use.

Long before the white man found his way to this part of the world, the Indians had known and used this vegetable cloth; so that what was so new and wonderful to King Charles and Governor Sir Thomas Lynch was an old story to the natives. Some time after King Charles received his vegetable necktie, Sir Hans Sloane, whose art-collection and library were the foundation of the British Museum, visited Jamaica. He described the tree fully, and was the first person who told the civilized world about it. The tree is commonly called the lace-bark tree. Its botanical name is Lagetto lintearia.

Wells, c.j. “vegetable clothing,” St. Nicholas Magazine 13, no. 2 (May – October 1886):524-25
Lace-bark dress. Photograph: © Saffron Walden Museum,
Essex (Image No. 000491).
Lace-bark slippers. Photograph: © Royal Botanic Gardens,
Kew (EBC 67770).

[1] A veil worn by grieving women in Victorian times. Crape was a matte silk gauze that had been crimped with heated rollers; dyed black; and stiffened with gum, starch, or glue.

[2] Illusion, also known as tulle, is a fine netting fabric made of nylon. Appearing delicate and sheer, it has enough strength to be gathered and made into a bridal veil.

Contexts

This story represents an unusual example of respect for indigenous knowledge, all the more remarkable as it was written during the height of Western Imperialism. Antigua’s history and culture is complex. Inhabited first by indigenous Siboney and, later, Arawak and Carib Indians, the island’s colonization by whites began when a group of English settlers arrived in 1632, inaugurating its development as a valuable sugar colony and trading port. In the seventeenth century, sugar cane became the biggest source of income for the British overlords, who used slaves and indentured servants to cultivate, harvest, and process the plant. Uniquely among British Caribbean colonies, when Britain abolished slavery in the empire in 1834, Antigua immediately instituted full emancipation. The island became an associated state of the British Commonwealth in 1967, gaining full independence in 1981.

Resources for Further Study
Contemporary Connections

The lace-bark tree has been identified as a source for eco-friendly fabrics. See “Eco-fibres old and new” from the Kew Gardens webpage.

Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place is a native Antiguan’s acerbic address to tourists which likens current tourism to a new form of colonization, enslaving the locals and featuring environmental racism. The narrated version, read by Robin Miles, is delightful. Here is a small sample.

Monica Drake recounts her family’s visit to Antigua in “Jamaica Kincaid’s Antigua.”

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