These ranged in price were, many of them, the talk in chapel on the morning of Arbor day! The ground had been prepared, the trees received, and were in readiness beforehand. A general lecture was given on the 'Mission of Beauty,' after which the students were notified that all could help who wished to, in planting the trees. from twenty-five cents to a dollar, and paid for by those who planted them. President Allen said, 'You are planting for the future, and when in after years you return, these trees will sing to you, and the music of your own will be sweeter than any other."" May the students long continue to come back from time to time to enjoy the beauty they have helped create. No man better appreciated the value of money or the power of the useful arts to build up for man's progress all that inventors or philanthropists can do. How it feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, and makes it possible to develop the higher sense of beauty! On this subject we cannot do better than to quote from his own words this "power of the beautiful": POWER OF THE BEAUTIFUL. "Ignoring this service of the useful to the higher ends of being, utility all too often compels the building of home and school and church in the cheapest manner possible, innocent of all finish or decoration. The angel of beauty plants flowers, shrubbery, trees, hard by the door of home or school, to shake down beauty upon all passers-by; all over the fields, to gladden the hearts of all beholders; all along the old walls and fences, to hide their deformity; all along by the pleasant water courses, to laugh when the brook sings; all around houses and barns, to cover their ugliness; singing in the sunshine, laughing in the storm, to console in the hour of sadness, to distill beauty on daily toil, to help educate childhood, awakening a love for purity and peace, for the beautiful, the noble, and the gocd. Utility, shouldering his ax, goes forth, hews down the lithe and graceful elm, all a-tremble with beauty, the generous maple, full of all sweet sentiments, its branches a domestic circle, nestling down cozily by the 'roof tree' of man, the slender, graceful poplar, palpitating to every breeze, the singing pine, the noble oak-hews them all down, casts them into the fire, and gives the land to grass, beans, cabbages, potatoes, pumpkins. The beauty to such of mountain stream and waterfall is their glorious mill privileges. The same spirit too frequently takes the young, who are still all a-tremble with sentiment, living, laughing, walking, talking poems.-takes and cages them in little, low, half-made, rickety old buildings, where Time, with his weather-brush dipped in sunshine and shower, has been the painter, and, standing where roads cross, if possible, and jutting far out into the same, without flower, shrub, or tree, standing out cold, dismal, and forbidding, perhaps with backless benches, and crevices for wind and storm to howl through, and a place, withal, where sheep and swine love to congregate. Within such places many a dull, tedious school day, with its long, juiceless, nerveless, mummyized lessons, is whiled away, wherein the hungry soul of childhood is far away, listening in fancy to the merry chatter of the brook, or the cuckoo's monotonous, dreamy, soulful song, while the 'pea is putting on its bloom,' or snuffing through every cranny of the old house the scent of new-mown hay, and the odorous south wind, laden with the bloom of field and wood, wasting their sweetness on the wilderness air. Thus taking lessons of flowers and showers and rainbows and butterflies and fish and bird's nests, they received instruction from teachers more potent than schoolbook--most proper and efficient teachers for apt and diligent pupils. "An ideal school is a home, not indeed for supplying meats and drinks for the bodies that perish, but a spirit home, where hungering and thirsting souls are satisfied, where dormant energies are aroused, stimulated, inspired to noble life and action, where spiritual growth, strength, harmony, and beauty are the results; in short, develop all that is desirable to appear in future life. An ideal school, like home, is one that is shut out from the bustle and strife of life,—amid rural quietudes, where all its surroundings are pure, simple, temperate, gentle, congenial, honest, very industrious, intelligent, religious,—a community wherein joyous childhood, ardent youth, earnest manhood, silver-locked age, all are inspired by a common purpose, upheld by honest, rugged toil, lit up by sincere affection, its quiet hours filled with gladsome pursuits. These instruct the young spirit in lessons that touch the inmost chords of the heart. In future years scenes and words and deeds, like some old trail through the wood, overgrown with brush and wild flowers, are revealed in their dim outlines, bringing back the early lessons of the heart, when apt and noble teachers, though humble, instructed in lessons, rude it may be, yet be, yet the reminders of which are as sacred relics. To memory every such year appears as a continuous summer without a gloom, every night a moon-lit and star-eyed one, every cloud rainbow wreathed. The innocence of childhood bursting into the enthusiasm of youth, as the garden budding into bloom, is susceptible, impressible, palpitating with gladness, as does a midsummer evening, breathing joy as the rose breathes sweetness, jubilant as are the birds in a morning of spring, sensitive to the touches of joy or sorrow, love or hate, beauty or ugliness, crushed by a frown, thrilled with delight by a token of affection, enraptured by every revelation of beauty, going out spontaneously towards loveliness or nobleness, towards those tenderly devoted to their welfare, ready to be nurtured under the watchcare of gentleness and piety. To such all of education does not consist in what is learned from books. Nature is its constant, faithful teacher, instructing in truth, beauty, law, and goodness. Fields, woods, streams, light, darkness, storm and sunshine, sky and clouds, all moods, all voices, are lessons joyfully received, all instructing the eager soul." |