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174 or less ovate and beaked, each of which is closely packed with cotton, in which are numerous seeds, so small that they are scarcely discernablediscernible [sic] by ordinary eyes.

As if it were the emblem of despairing love! It is rather the emblem of triumphant love and sympathy with all nature. It may droop,—it is so lithe and supple,—but it never weeps. The willow of Babylon blooms not the less hopefully with us though its other half is not in the New England world at all, and never has been. It droops not to represent David's tears, but rather to snatch the crown from Alexander's head. Nor were poplars ever the weeping sisters of Phaeton, for nothing rejoices them more than the sight of the sun's chariot, and little reck they who drives it. No wonder its wood was anciently in demand for bucklers, for, like the whole tree, it is not only soft and pliant, but tough and resilient, not splitting at the first blow, but closing its wounds at once, and refusing to transmit its hurts. I know of one foreign species which introduced itself into Concord as a withe used to tie up a bundle of trees. A gardener stuck it in the ground, and it lived, and has its descendants. Herodotus says that the Scythians divined by the help of willow