Read "Arboriculture" by Ambrose Bierce online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
[Californians are asking themselves how Joaquin Miller will / make the trees grow which he proposes to plant in the form of / a Maltese cross on Goat Island, in San Francisco Bay. -- "New / York Graphic".]
You may say they won't grow, and say they'll decay -- / Say it again till you're sick of the say, / Get up on your ear, blow your blaring bazoo / And hire a hall to proclaim it; and you / May stand on a stump with a lifted hand / As a pine may stand or a redwood stand, / And stick to your story and cheek it through.