The second Sunday of December brought "the Feast of the Tree" in Lebanon, in whose fes-tivals the whole country took part, government and people alike.

The Woman's Voice mag-azine, which holds in high esteem the idea of Tree Week and its spread among the classes of Lebanese in the moun-tains and on the coast, is pleased to present Mrs. Zaheya Ayoub in this splendid word.

Symbol of immortality, heritage of our forefa-thers — that is what you are, O tree!!..

Your roots striking into the earth and your branches reaching into the sky pour blessing down upon us!!...

Your sheltering shade and your gentle rustling fill our mountains with bounty and life!

Your green color is the color of hope, and your delicious fruit is useful-ness itself.

Is it too much, then, that we should keep a feast for you and hallow your beauty?..

Or is it any great thing for you that we should set you in the heart of our world, so that you may settle with it in the innermost chambers of our hearts?...

I beg you, O tree of bounty — by the spring when it smiles, by the fragrance when it grows sweet and spreads, by the pulse of life when it beats — do not forget us in your bounty and your blessing; for we are in need of that bounty, and we thirst for that blessing.

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I heard this prayer when I opened my eyes today and the white threads of daybreak greeted me from my high balcony. I listened with all the tenderness in my being, and repeated the words that follow amid the soft breathings of the breeze, with all the ardor and faith in my soul; and I gazed into the distance, hoping to discover the

source of the voice, but saw only the heads of the cypresses, my beloved neigh-bors, facing me as on every morning with that loftiness which knows nothing but glory and pride, and that greenness to which pallor knows no path. I doubted no longer, then, that the prayer was nearer to me than I had supposed; it was not from afar, as I had imagined, but my own soul's communing with neighbors I love — and they know of this love — so I wished that they might whisper to me melodies that are to my heart like the life pulsing in their veins.

I love you, my neighbors, with a love that makes me wish I had lived in an age when you and your kind covered the breadth of my country — or that I had not come into life until some day to come, when the peaks of my country return with you to their former glory.

So your feast today is the sweetest feast my heart can keep, for it is a steadfast step toward what I love.

What service have you not rendered to man, O bountiful tree? Have you not been pillars for his dwelling, fuel for his fire, food for his body, and for his eyes and his heart a promenade, a rest, and a peace?

From your branches he drew a symbol of peace, and from your trunks he learned a meaning of steadfastness.

There was a day, O tree of my country, when the people of these holy shores clove with you the swell of the sea; in you they defied destiny, drew the distances near, and wrote for civiliza-tion lines that shall not be effaced so long as life rests upon civilization.

On that day you were the victim of their genius, and our poet went on singing of that genius:

"Their ships in the south rain down upon the Nile invention and thought and craft"

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"From the end of the wide white sea the ships come home from a voyage"

And there was another day, when the imitator-invaders had power over you and wanted you for mounts for

themselves as well; they harvested you without mercy, leaving your homeland a barren page, its high peaks swept bare by the rains. Where, then, were your roots to guard the peaks, and where your branches to shield their snows from the heat of July?

Would that I had a magic power! I would use it to gain my dearest wish — to see the land of my country become once more a green paradise through your blessed leaves.

But pardon me — is not this celebration itself a token of the very power I ask? Are not these generous ones, the friends of the tree, laboring in your cause with a devotion that knows no weariness and an energy that no feebleness overtakes — are they not this [...]

The will of the people, reared upon love of you — that is the true magic