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.
One hundred and twenty-seven feet from bough-end to bough-end! What do you say to that?
And gentle ladies beneath it, that love it and celebrate its praises! And that in a town of such supreme, audacious, Alpine loveliness as Norwich!--Only the dear people there must learn to call it Norridge, and not be misled by the mere accident of spelling.
NorWICH.
PorCHmouth.
CincinnatAH.
What a sad picture of our civilization! I did not speak to you of the great tree on what used to be the Colman farm, in Deerfield, simply because I had not seen it for many years, and did not like to trust my recollection.

But I had it in memory, and even noted down, as one of the finest trees in symmetry and beauty I had ever seen.

I have received a document, signed by two citizens of a neighboring town, certified by the postmaster and a selectman, and these again corroborated, reinforced, and sworn to by a member of that extraordinary college-class to which it is the good fortune of my friend the Professor to belong, who, though he has FORMERLY been a member of Congress, is, I believe, fully worthy of confidence.

The tree "girts" eighteen and a half feet, and spreads over a hundred, and is a real beauty.