THE OLIVE TREE

“The ash,” said Miss Harson, “has some relations of which, I think, you will be rather surprised to hear. These relations are both trees and shrubs, and the lilac, for instance, is one of them.”

“Why, they don’t look a bit alike,” exclaimed Clara.

“No, they certainly do not; for, although this fragrant shrub often grows as large as a tree, it is quite different from the ash tree. Yet both belong to the olive family.”

“The kind of olives that papa likes to eat at dinner, and that you and I don’t like, Miss Harson?” asked Malcolm.

“The very same,” replied his governess; “only that we are speaking now of the tree on which the olives grow. It is well said that the very name of ‘olive’ suggests the idea of Palestine and the sunny lands of the East. The olive tree is one of the most prominent trees of the Bible. It is mentioned in the very earliest part of the Scriptures, in the book of Genesis. I wonder if some one can tell me about it?”

“I remember: a dove found a leaf when it was raining and brought it to Noah in the ark,” said little Edith, quickly.

“The rain had stopped falling, dear, after the deluge, and the waters were receding, or falling, when Noah sent forth the dove a second time to see what it would find. Here is the verse: ’And the dove came in to him in the evening; and lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off; so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth.’ For this reason the olive-branch is a common emblem of peace. The olive tree is often mentioned in other parts of the Bible, and was considered one of the most valuable trees of Palestine, which is described as ’a land of oil-olive and honey.’ It is not nearly so handsome as some other trees of the Holy Land, nor is it grand-looking or graceful. The leaves, which are long for the width, and smooth, are dark green on the upper side and silvery beneath; they generally grow in pairs. The fruit is shaped like a plum; it is green when first formed, then paler in color; and when quite ripe, it is black.”

“But those that papa eats are olive-color,” said Clara.

“Yes,” replied Miss Harson, smiling, “but all these hues I have mentioned are olive-color in some stage of the fruit; and it is in the green stage, before it is quite ripe, that it is gathered for preserving.”

“But that isn’t preserves, is it?” asked Malcolm, drawing up his mouth at the recollection of an olive he had once tried to eat. “I thought preserves were always sweet.”

“That is the shape in which you are accustomed to them, Malcolm; but to preserve a thing means to keep it from decay, and salt and vinegar will do this as well as sugar. Preserves of this kind are what you call ’puckery.’ As to the color, Clara, ‘olive-green’ is a color by itself, because of its peculiar tint. It is a gray green instead of a blue or yellow green, and it has a very dull effect. The fruit is produced only once in two years, and in bearing-season the tree is loaded with white blossoms that drop to the ground like flakes of snow. It is said that not one in a hundred of these numerous flowers becomes an olive. Here,” continued Miss Harson, pointing to a page of a book in her hand, “is a representation of an olive-branch with some of the plum-shaped fruit. The branch, you see, is hard and stiff-looking.”

“I should think the tree would be prettier when all those white flowers are on it,” said little Edith.

“It is much prettier,” replied her governess “but not so useful. The fruit of the olive is so valuable that numbers of people depend upon it for their support. The wood, too, is very hard and durable, and, as it takes a fine polish, it is used for making many ornamental articles.”

“And where does the olive-oil come from?” asked Clara. “Do they make holes in the tree for it, as they do for maple-sap?”

Malcolm was about to exclaim at this idea, but he remembered just in time that, should Miss Harson happen to question him, he himself could not tell where the oil came from.

“The oil is pressed from the olives,” was the reply; “a large, vigorous tree is said to yield a thousand pounds of it. It is such an important article of commerce in the regions where it is prepared that every one desires to get as much as he can out of his olive trees, but those who are too greedy of gain will spoil the quality of the oil to make a larger quantity. The small olive of Syria is considered the most delicate, and Italian olives also are very fine; those of Spain are larger and coarser. The best olive-oil comes from the south-eastern portion of France and is a clear, pure liquid; it is obtained from the first pressing of the fruit. This must be only a gentle squeeze, to get the purest oil: the quality usually sold is made by a heavier pressure; and then, when the olives are worked over again, come the dregs, which are not fit for table-use.”

“Do they mash ’em, like making apples into cider?” asked Malcolm.

“Something like that; and the olive-farmers take the most anxious care of their orchards, for they know that the more olives the more oil. This with the Italians means a living, and one of their proverbs says, ’If you wish to leave a competency to your grandchildren, plant an olive.’ The poorest of the fruit is eaten in their own families, ’to save it,’ and, as it does not taste so well, it will go much farther. They do not eat olives, though, as we see them eaten one or two as a relish; but a respectable dishful is provided for each person, instead of the bread and potatoes which they do not have.”

“I’d rather have the bread and potatoes,” said Clara, “and I’m glad that I don’t have to eat a whole plate of olives.”

“If you had always been accustomed to having olives, as the Italians are,” replied Miss Harson, “you would think them very nice. I do not suppose that their children ever think how much more inviting are the olives that are kept for sale. Olives intended for exportation are gathered while still green, usually in the month of October. They are soaked for some hours in the strongest lye, to get rid of their bitterness, and are afterward allowed to stand for a fortnight in frequently-changed fresh water, in order to be perfectly purified of the lye. It only then remains to preserve them in common salt and water, when they are ready for export.”

“That’s what they taste of,” exclaimed Malcolm “salt; and I don’t like salt things.”

“I think,” said his governess, with a smile, “that I have seen a boy whom I know enjoying sliced ham and tongue very much indeed.”

“So I do, Miss Harson,” was the eager reply; “but ham and tongue, you know, don’t taste like olives.”

“No, because they are ham and tongue. But they certainly taste salty, and that is what you object to. It is generally found that sweeping assertions are not very safe ones. But to come back to our olive tree: it is an evergreen, and it grows very easily. The readiness with which a twig will take root reminds us of the willow. A fine grove of olive trees at Messa, in Morocco, was accidentally planted. It is said that one of the kings of the dynasty of Saddia, being on a military expedition, encamped here with his army. The pegs with which the cavalry picketed their horses were cut from olive trees in the neighborhood, and, some sudden cause of alarm leading to the abandonment of the position, the pegs were left in the ground. Making the best of the situation, the pegs developed into the handsomest group of olive trees in the district.”

The children wondered if any trees had ever been planted in such a strange way before, and little Edith said thoughtfully,

“But, Miss Harson, why don’t good people go around and plant trees wherever there aren’t any? It would be so nice!”

“Some good people do plant trees, dear, wherever they can,” replied her governess, “thinking, as they say, of those who are to come after them; a great many roadside trees have grown in this way. But no one is allowed to meddle with other people’s property; waste-places might easily be beautified with trees if the owners cared for anything but for their own present interests. But here is something you will like to hear about the olives of Palestine: ’They are all planted together in the grove like the trees in a forest, and it would seem scarcely possible for the owners to distinguish their own property. But when the fruit is getting ripe, watchmen are appointed to guard the grove and prevent a single olive from being touched even by the person who has a right to the tree.’ You do not look as if you would like that, Malcolm.”

“Indeed I wouldn’t!” replied the boy. “I rather think I’d take my own olives whenever I wanted ’em.”

“Not if you lived where all were agreed on this point, as they seem to be in Palestine. ’Days pass on, and the autumn is at hand before the governor of the district issues the wished-for proclamation; then the watchmen are removed. Immediately the scene becomes a most animated one. The grove is alive with an eager throng of men, women and children shaking down the precious fruit. It is, however, scarcely possible to bring every berry down, nor would it seem desirable, since after this great harvest comes the gleaning-time, when the poor, who have no olive trees, are permitted to come into the grove and shake down what is left.’”

“Isn’t there something about that in the Bible, Miss Harson?” asked Clara.

“Yes; it is in the book of the prophet Isaiah, ’Yet gleaning grapes shall be left in it, as the shaking of an olive tree, two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the outmost fruitful branches thereof, saith the Lord God of Israel.’ This is a prophecy about God’s people, but the Jews were told by God to leave something, when they were harvesting, for the poor to glean. Does it not seem wonderful that the mighty Ruler of the universe should condescend to such small things? But nothing is small with him, and we see that his loving care extends to the poorest and the meanest.”

“Miss Harson,” asked Edith, with great earnestness, “has each of our hairs got a number on it? I couldn’t find any.”

The young lady could scarcely keep from smiling, but she was obliged to call Malcolm to order, and even Clara seemed amused at her little sister’s queer interpretation of the loving words, “The very hairs of your head are all numbered.”

Miss Harson took her youngest pupil on her knee and explained to her the meaning of our Saviour’s words in Luke xi, where it is added, “Fear not,”, because the heavenly Father’s loving care is always around us.

“It was a natural mistake,” she continued, “for a very little girl to make; but we must not try to find amusement in mistakes about God’s word. Many grown people are irreverent in this way without knowing it: perhaps they were not properly taught when they were children. But my children must not have this excuse, and I want them all to promise me that they will never utter nor listen to words from the Bible in any other but a reverent manner.”

All promised, Malcolm with a flushed face and subdued tone; and Edith felt that one of the great puzzles of her small existence had been solved.

“Oil is the most important product of the olive tree,” said Miss Harson, “and it has well been called its richness and fatness. The great demand for it in Europe and Asia prevents the best quality from being sent abroad, and it is said that even the most wealthy foreigners seldom get it pure. It is a most important article of food, taking the place held by butter and lard with us. Innumerable lamps, too, are kept burning by means of this oil, and so varied are its uses in the East that it was a greater thing than we can understand for the prophet Habakkuk to say, ’Although the labor of the olive shall fail, ... yet will I rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.’ Job says, ’The rock poured me out rivers of oil;’ this means the oil of the olive, which will thrive on the sides and tops of rocky hills where there is scarcely any earth. It is a very long-lived tree, as well as an evergreen; the Psalmist says, ‘I am like a green olive tree in the house of God.’”

“What does a wild olive tree mean, Miss Harson?” asked Clara.

“It means, dear, one that has grown without being cultivated, like our wild cherry and plum trees. The wild olive is smaller than the other, and inferior to it in every way. There are a great many olive trees in Palestine, and a place where they must have been very plentiful is called by a name which we often see in the Bible. What is it, Malcolm?”

“Is it ’the Mount of Olives’?” said Malcolm.

“Yes, and it is sometimes called ‘Olivet.’ It is mentioned in the Old Testament as well as in the New. In Second Samuel it is written: ’And David went up by the ascent of Mount Olivet, and wept as he went up, and had his head covered, and he went barefoot: and all the people that was with him covered every man his head, and they went up, weeping as they went up.’”

“What was the matter?” asked Edith.

“King David’s wicked son Absalom had risen up against his father because he wished to be king in his stead. You remember how he was caught by the head in the boughs of an oak during the very battle that he was fighting for this purpose; so we know that he did not succeed in his wicked plan, but lost his life instead. The Mount of Olives is described as ’a ridge running north and south on the east side of Jerusalem, its summit about half a mile from the city wall and separated from it by the valley of the Kidron. It is composed of a chalky limestone, the rocks everywhere showing themselves. The olive trees that formerly covered it and gave it its name are now represented by a few trees and clumps of trees. There are three prominent summits on the ridge; of these, the southernmost, which is lower than the other two, is now known as ’the Mount of Offence,’ originally ‘the Mount of Corruption,’ because Solomon defiled it with idolatrous worship. Over this ridge passes the road to Bethany, the most frequented route to Jericho and the Jordan. The side of the Mount of Olives toward the west contains many tombs cut in the rock. The central summit rises two hundred feet above Jerusalem and presents a fine view of the city, and, indeed, of the whole region, including the mountains of Ephraim on the north, the valley of the Jordan on the east, a part of the Dead Sea on the south-east, and beyond it Kerak, in the mountains of Moab. Perhaps no spot on earth unites so fine a view with so many memorials of the most solemn and important events. Over this hill the Saviour often climbed in his journeys to and from the Holy City. Gethsemane lay at its foot on the west, and Bethany on its eastern slope.’”

During the reading of this description of the Mount of Olives, Miss Harson showed the children pictures of the different spots mentioned, and thus they were not likely soon to forget what had been told them.

“Who can repeat some words from the New Testament about this mountain?” asked Miss Harson.

“‘Jesus went unto the Mount of Olives,’” said Clara, who had learned this verse in her Sunday lesson, “and it is the first verse of the eighth chapter of St. John.”

“And the verse just before it, at the end of the seventh chapter,” replied her governess, “says that ‘every man went unto his own house,’ but ‘Jesus went unto the Mount of Olives.’ In another place it is said that ‘at night he went out and abode in the Mount of Olives,’ and in still another that he ‘continued all night in prayer to God,’ probably on the same mountain.”

“And can people really go and see the very same Mount of Olives now?” asked Malcolm, eagerly.

“The very same,” was the reply, “except, as I just read to you, many of the olive trees that gave it its name are no longer there. The Garden of Gethsemane, too, the most sacred spot near the mountain, is much changed, and a traveler who saw it lately says:

“’At the foot of the Mount of Olives is a garden enclosed by a wall. There are paths and there are plots of flowers, the work of loving hands in recent years. The flowers speak of to-day, but there are olive trees in the garden that testify of the history of far-away years. Their venerable trunks, gnarled and rugged, are like the rough, marred binding of old books, shutting in a history going back to a far-off date.

“’On one side of this garden slope upward the terraces of the Mount of Olives terraces that are cultivated to-day even as the slopes of Olivet have been cultivated for generations and centuries. The other side of the garden looks toward the eastern wall of Jerusalem. Deep down in its shadowy bed, between the wall and the garden, lies the ravine of the Kedron.

“’If you visit that garden and look upon its old olive trees, the keeper of the place will tell you that you are in Gethsemane, the spot of our Saviour’s betrayal. He will point out the “Grotto of the Agony,” the place where the disciples slumbered, and that where Judas, before his brethren, ceased publicly to be a follower and became the betrayer of Jesus. Some things you very naturally may question as the guardian of the enclosure tells his story. Whether any one of the venerable olive trees ever threw its shadow across the prostrate form of Jesus is more than doubtful, but that these trees are burdened with the history of centuries all must concede. “Gethsemane” means “oil-press,” and olive trees long ago gave Olivet its name. That somewhere in this neighborhood the Saviour suffered cannot be doubted, and within that closed wall may have been the very spot where he bowed in his agony, and where he heard the tongue of Judas utter his treacherous “Rabbi!” and where he felt the serpent-breath of the traitor as that traitor kissed him.’”

Miss Harson read of this solemn spot in a low, reverent tone; and the little audience were very quiet, until at last Clara said,

“Whenever we see an ash tree or olives, how much there will be to think of!”