Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 8.djvu/385

 Historic Trees.

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��history and legends of Natick, states that " Mr. Samuel Perry, a man who could look back to 1749, often said that Mr. Peabody, the successor to Eliot, used to hitch his horse by that tree every Sabbath, because Eliot used to hitch his there."

This oak was originally very tall ; the top was probably broken off in the tremendous September gale of 181 5 ; as it was reported to be in a muti- lated condition in 1820. Time, how- ever, partially concealed the disaster by means of a vigorous growth of the remaining branches. In 1830, it measured seventeen feet in circum- ference two feet from the ground. It had now become a tree of note, and would probably have monopolized the honors to the exclusion of the present Eliot Oak, had it not met with an un- timely end. The keeper of ihe tavern in front of which it stood had the tree cut down in May, 1842. This act occa- sioned great indignation, and gave rise to a lawsuit at Framingham, "which was settled by the offenders against pubhc opinion paying the costs and planting trees in the public green." A cartload of the wood was carried to the trial, and much of it was taken home by the spectators to make into canes and other relics.

" The King is dead, long live the King ! "

Upon the demise of the old monarch, the title naturally passed to the White

��Oak, its neighbor, another of the race of Titans, standing conveniently near, of whose early history very Uttle is positively known beyond the fact that it is an old tree ; and with the title passed the traditions and reverence that gather about crowned heads.

Mrs. Stowe has given it a new claim to notice, for beneath it, according to Drake's Historic Middlesex, "Sam Law- son, the good-natured, lazy story-teller, in Oldtown Folks, put his blacksmith's shop. It was removed when the church was built."

The present Eliot Oak stands east of the Unitarian meeting-house, which church is on or near the spot where Eliot's first church stood. It measured, January, 1884, seventeen feet in cir- cumference at the ground; fourteen feet two inches at four feet above. It is a fine old tree, and it is not improb- able — though it is unproven — that it dates back to the first settlement of Natick.

" Thou ancient oak! whose myriad leaves are loud

With sounds of unintelligible speech,

Sounds as of surges on a shingly beach.

Or multitudinous murmurs of a crowd;

With some mysterious gift of tongues endowed

Thou speakest a different dialect to each.

To me a language that no man can teach.

Of a lost race long vanished like a cloud.

For underneath thy shade, in days remote,

Seated like Abraham at eventide,

Beneath the oak of Mamre, the unknown

Apostle of the Indian, Eliot, wrote

His Bible in a language that hath died.

And is forgotten save by thee alone." — Longfellow.

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