THE MAPLE-TREE’S CHILDREN.
A maple-tree awoke at spring-time, shivering in the east winds. “O mother Nature!” she said, “I tremble with cold. Behold my limbs ugly and bare! The birds are all coming back from the south, and I would look my best. They will soon be building their nests. Oh, a bird’s nest does make a tree so pleasant! But, alas! they will not come to me, because I have no leaves to hide them.”
And kind mother Nature smiled, and presented her daughter Maple with such multitudes of leaves!—more than you could count. These gave beauty to the tree, besides keeping the rain out of the birds’ nests; for birds had quickly come to build there, and there was reason to expect a lively summer. A right happy Maple-Tree now was she, and well pleased with her pretty green leaves. They were beautiful in the sunlight; and the winds whispered to them things so sweet as to make them dance for joy. A pair of golden-robins had a home there, and thrushes came often. Sunshine and song all day long! Or, if the little leaves became hot and thirsty in the summer’s heat, good mother Nature gave them cooling rain-drops to drink. A happier Maple-Tree could nowhere be found.
“Thanks, thanks, mother Nature,” she said, “for all your care and your loving-kindness to me.”
But, when autumn came with its gloomy skies and its chilling winds, the Maple-Tree grew sad: for she heard her little leaves saying to each other, “We are going to die; we are going to die!”
People living near said, “Hark! Do you hear the wind? It sounds like fall.” Nobody told them it was the leaves all over the forest, moaning to each other, “We are going to die; we are going to die!”
“My dear little leaves!” sighed the Maple-Tree. “Poor things, they must go! Ah, how sad to see them droop and fade away!”
“I will make their death beautiful,” said kind mother Nature; and she changed their color to a scarlet, which glowed in the sunlight like fire.
And everyone said, “How beautiful!” But the poor Maple-Tree sighed, knowing it was the beauty of death.
And one cold October morning she stood with her limbs all bare, looking desolate. The bright leaves lay heaped about her.
“Dear, pretty things,” she said, “how I shall miss them! they were such a comfort! And, how ugly I am! Nobody will enjoy looking at the Maple-Tree now.”
But presently a flock of school-girls came along, chatting away, all so cheerily, of ferns, red berries, and autumn-leaves.
“And I think,” said one, “that there’s a great deal of beauty in a tree without any leaves at all.”
“So do I,” said another. “Just look up through yonder elm! Its branches and boughs and twigs make a lovely picture against the sky.”
“When my uncle came home,” said a third, “he told us that some of the people in the torrid zone perfectly longed to see a forest without leaves.”
And, thus chattering, the lively school-girls passed on.
“Ah!” sighed the Maple-Tree, “this will at least be pleasant to dream about.”
For she already felt her winter’s nap coming on. If she could but have staid awake, and heard what her little leaves said to each other afterwards down there on the ground!
“Dear old tree! She has taken care of us all our lives, and fed us, and held us up to the sun, and been to us a kind mother; and now we will do something for her. We will get under ground, and turn ourselves into food to feed her with; for she’ll be sure to wake up hungry after her long nap.”
Good little things! The rains helped them, and the winds,—in this way: The rains beat them into the ground, and the winds blew sand over them; and there they turned themselves into something very nice for the old Maple-Tree,—something good to take.