Arboriculture

[Californians are asking themselves how Joaquin Miller will make the trees grow which he proposes to plant in the form of a Maltese cross on Goat Island, in San Francisco Bay.--New York Graphic.]

You may say they won't grow, and say they'll decay-- Say it again till you're sick of the say, Get up on your ear, blow your blaring bazoo And hire a hall to proclaim it; and you May stand on a stump with a lifted hand As a pine may stand or a redwood stand, And stick to your story and cheek it through. But I point with pride to the far divide Where the Snake from its groves is seen to glide-- To Mariposa's arboreal suit, And the shaggy shoulders of Shasta Butte, And the feathered firs of Siskiyou; And I swear as I sit on my marvelous hair-- I roll my marvelous eyes and swear, And sneer, and ask where would your forests be To-day if it hadn't been for me! Then I rise tip-toe, with a brow of brass, Like a bully boy with an eye of glass; I look at my gum sprouts, red and blue, And I say it loud and I say it low: "They know their man and you bet they'll grow!"