How much more striking would be the calendar counted on the rings
of one of those awful trees which were standing when Christ was on
earth, and where that brief mortal life is chronicled with the
stolid apathy of vegetable being, which remembers all human history
as a thing of yesterday in its own dateless existence!
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.
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