Happy is the man who has made a companion of some fine old tree standing near his home, type of the tree which he loved in his boyhood, perchance the very same huge white oak. He learns to go to it as he would to his friend, to let the old tree share his sorrows and his joys. Others may be heedless of its charm, ignorant of its power to help, but for him it always has a welcome and a ministry of beauty. He learns to visit it often, to talk to it in his thoughts. Some dreamy summer morning he muses on its history, its service to mankind. The old tree seems to bend its branches down to listen as he says:
"I know you, old tree, and I love you. You belong to one of the first and finest families. The remains of your ancestors have been found in the eocene and miocene rocks, away, way north of your home at the present time. They grew in beauty long before man's face was seen upon the earth. The whole of civilization has rested beneath your ancestral shade. Long before the Eternal City was founded your ancestors adorned the seven hills and beautified the grass beneath with the flickering shadows cast by their sunlit leaves. Some of them which gave shade to the first habitations in the proud city that from her throne of beauty ruled the world were still fine and flourishing centuries later when Pliny sat beneath them in studious contemplation. Others of your ancestors, old tree, formed the sacred grove of Dodona, where the oracles spake to minds as yet in darkness. They were accounted fit to compare in might and majesty with Jove himself, and some of them stood like sturdy sentinels around his Roman temple. The civic crown which adorned the brows of Roman heroes as a reward for great deeds done, was made of green leaves from their branches. In the shadow of your ancestors Pan played his pipes, Theocritus sat and listened to the everlasting laughter of the summer sea and his shepherds and goatherds reclined to engage in their friendly contests of song. Vergil in his eclogues paid tribute to their beauty and grandeur. They guarded the Druids' sacred fire and some of them are living yet which gave shelter to the victorious legions of William the Conqueror when he crossed the channel more than two thousand years ago. Hearts of oak made the ships which helped a nation fight her way to the supremacy of the sea and also the caravels which bore an intrepid discoverer across the weary waste of waters to the threshold of the new home for all those seeking life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Some of your ancestors made the log cabins to shelter the band of pioneers led by the pious Hooker into the valley of the Connecticut and another preserved the precious charter until the storm of tyranny had passed. It is your family, old tree, which has lent itself willingly to the service of man, in the comfort and stability of his home and in the panels and carvings which adorn the great cathedrals he has built for the worship of his Creator and the enrichment of his own soul."
Still the old tree listens. The heart warms toward it as memory speaks of its companionship through the years:
"And I have watched you, old tree, in storm and in sunshine; in the early winter when the soft snow stuck fast to your rugged old trunk and your branches and twigs and made you a picture of purity; and in the later winter when the fierce storms wrestled in vain with your sinewy limbs. While the other trees of the forest were tossing hither and thither, bent and broken by the blast, you stood in calm poise and dignity, nodding and swaying towards me as if to show me how to withstand adversity. And I have watched your pendulous blossoms daily grow more beautiful among the miracles of early May when the sunshine of the flower-spangled days made you a vision of tender green and gold. I have seen your tiny leaves creep out of their protecting bud-scales in the springtime, their upper surfaces touched with a pink more lovely than that on the cheek of a child, while below they were clothed with a silvery softness more delicately fair than the coverlid in the cradle of a king. I have watched them develop into full-grown leaves with lobes as rounded and finely formed as the tips of ladies' fingers and I have noted how well the mass of your foliage has protected your feathered friends and their naked nestlings from the peltings of the hail, the drenchings of the rain and the scorching of the summer sun. I have gloried in the grateful shade you gave alike to happy children in their play and to tired parents weary and worn with the work and the worry of the world; and it was then, old tree, that you taught me to be sympathetic and hospitable. And I have watched your fruit ripen and fall, to be eagerly seized by the wild folk of the woodland and stored, some of it in the holes of your own trunk, for use during the long winter. You taught me to be generous and they gave me lessons in forethought and frugality. Later in the autumn I have watched your green leaves take on a wondrous wine-red beauty, as the splendor of a soul sometimes shines most vividly in the hour before it is called home; and they taught me not to grieve or to murmur because death must come to us all. In the winter I have seen the squirrel digging beneath the snow to find the acorns he had planted in the fall. He didn't find them all; some of them came up in the springtime as tiny trees and spoke to me of the life that knows no end."
"FAT FROM A SUMMER'S FEEDING" (p. 63)
Now a woodchuck, fat from a summer's feeding, climbs heavily to a tree stump and seats himself to pass the morning in his favorite avocation of doing nothing. He worked during the night or the very early morning, for fresh dirt lay at the entrance to his hole. Evidently he had been enlarging it for the winter. Like a Plato at his philosophies he sits now, slowly moving his head from side to side, as if steeping his senses in the beauty of the world around him so that all the dreams of his long winter sleep shall be pleasant. A persistent fly, a slap, and the woodchuck hears. He turns that dark gray, solemn looking face, and asks mutely, reproachfully, perhaps resentfully, why his reverie has been disturbed. Then he hastily scurries to his burrow and he will not again appear though I sit here all day.
