THE BEECH AND THE OAK
1
IT was in the old days.
There were no towns with houses and streets and towering church-steeples. There were no schools. For there were not many boys and those there were learnt from their fathers to shoot with a bow and arrow, to hunt the deer in his hiding-place, to kill bears in order to make clothes of their hides and to get fire by rubbing two pieces of wood together. When they knew all this thoroughly, their education was completed.
Nor were there any railways, or tilled fields, or ships on the sea, or books, for there was nobody who would read them.
There was hardly anything but trees.
But then of trees there were plenty. They stood everywhere, from coast to coast, mirrored themselves in every river and sea and stretched their mighty branches up into the sky. They stooped out over the sea-shore, dipped their branches in the black water of the marshes and looked out haughtily over the land from the tall hills.
They all knew one another, for they belonged to one big family and they were proud of it.