Show CARVED IN ahe bark A clomp of upon which appeared the of conr boldien Sol dien 1 I dont quite and I 1 naver could said an observer prompts people to arito their dames in public places trees have always been favorite objects upon which to carva names aud tho smooth bark of tha beech offers a field most inviting to tho knife of the carver I 1 saw a bunch of beech arcs upon which thousands of names had been cut this was in virginia close by the left bank cf tha james river A ravine made back from the raver and at tho head of this ravina here was a spring around tho spring was this of beech trees the names carved on these trees were those of soldiers who had been encamped thereabout there about in tho time of the civil war and who bad come to this spring for water it was in 1879 that 1 saw them so that they must have been there then at least 14 years they had probably been longer about a third of tho names were still legible many of them were tho names of men of pennsylvania regiments those that had become were mainly those that had been carved on smaller trees there was one big tree that bad upon it I 1 should think names they encircled it for 20 feet up from lh ground it seemed as it some of those among the highest must have been cut by men who ecung down from the first branch and one could imagine that men stood on one others an shoulders to reach above the names already carved by men on the ground or that perhaps there was led up besida the tree n horse upon whose back the carlei ethod these names may have been carved every ono of them simply as a pastime and yet it seemed somehow as hough this was a case in which the carving might have been done in something more than a merely idle spirit new york sun |