"Chestnut," it is well known, is uncomplimentary slang for a worn-out anecdote. They told me in Philadelphia that the phrase had its source in a theatre in Walnut Street, one of the principal thoroughfares of that city. This theatre was built in rivalry of an older one in Chestnut Street: its _répertoire_ lacked originality, and patrons of the other house, when they recognised jokes they had heard and situations they had seen there, used to hail the players with the cry--"A chestnut! a chestnut!" And this explanation may serve as well as another. In this connection I may be permitted to put on record a _bon mot_ by a well-known member of the present Radical Government. We had been dining, a small party, in the House of Commons, shortly after the late Sir M. Grant Duff had published the third volume of his reminiscences, which, it may be remembered, contained many anecdotes not told for the first time. One of the ladies of our party expressed a wish to see Westminster Hall, and, having been conducted thither, asked me what the fine roof was made of. "It is of oak," I replied; "some people used to think it was of chestnuts, but I don't suppose there were enough chestnuts in England to furnish a roof like that in the reign of Richard." "No," observed Mr. ----, "Grant Duff had not published his third volume!"
"Oh it's hame and it's hame, at hame I fain would be, Hame, lads, hame in the north countrie; Oh the oak and the ash and the bonny ivy tree, They a' nourish best in the north countrie."
The bard who was responsible for this ancient jingle assigned that precedence to the oak which common sentiment has always accorded to it as the monarch of British woodland. Economically, also, the oak held the first place so long as Britannia ruled the waves from wooden walls, but in this ironclad era our Admiralty has little use for oak timber, and there is now no broad-leaved or "hardwood" tree that can be cultivated so profitably as the ash. Indeed it is hardly doubtful that this is the only species of tree, willows, poplars and certain conifers excepted, which a young man may plant with reasonable expectation of receiving any pecuniary profit during his lifetime. The properties which ensure to the ash (_Fraxinus excelsior_) this superiority to all rivals are its hardihood, the matchless quality of its timber for many purposes, and its market value from a very early age.