Carved In The Bark

"I don't quite understand, and I uevr couíd, " said au observer, "wbat prompts people to write their ñames in public places. Trees have always been favorite objects upou which to carva ñames, and tho sniootb bark of the beecb offers a field most inviting to the kuife of the carver. I saw once a buuch of beecb trees upon ■which thousands of names had been cut. This was in Virginia, close by the left bank of the James river. A raviue made back from the river, and at the head of this ravine there was a spring. Arouud the spring was this dump of beech trees. "The names carved on these trees were those of soldiers who had been encamped thèreabout iu the time of the 3i vil war and who had come to this spring for water. It was in 1879 that I saw tbern, so that they must have been there then at loast 1 4 yeurs. They had probably been there longer. About a third of the uames were still legible. Many of thein were the names of men of Pennsylvania rogiineuts. Those that had become illegibie were mainly those that had been carved ou smaller treos. "ïhere was oue big tree that had upon it, I ehonld think, 500 names. They encircled it for 20 feet up from the ground. It seemed as if sume of those among the highest must have been cut by men who swung down from the first branch, and one could imagine that men stood on one aiiother's shoulders to reaoh above the names alieady carved by men standing ou tho grouud, or tbat perhaps theie was led up beside the tree a horse upon whose back the carver stood. "Theso names vnay have been carved, every ono of them, riroply as a pastime, and yot it seemed somehow as though this was a case in which the carving miaht have been dcne in something