By Carl Ewald
It all happened long, long ago. There were no towns then with houses and streets, and church steeples domineering over everything.
There were no schools, for there were not many boys, and those that there were learnt from their father to shoot with the bow and arrow, to hunt the stag in his covert, to kill the bear in order to make clothes out of his skin, and to rub two pieces of wood together till they caught fire. When they knew this perfectly, they had finished their education.
There were no railways either, and no cultivated fields, no ships on the sea, no books, for there was nobody who could read them.
There was scarcely anything except Trees. But Trees there were in plenty. They stood everywhere from coast to coast; they saw themselves reflected in all the rivers and lakes, and stretched their mighty boughs up towards heaven. They leaned out over the shore, dipped their boughs in the black fen water, and from the high hills looked out proudly over the land.
They all knew each other, for they belonged to a great family, and were proud of it.
"We are all Oak Trees," they said. "We own the land, and rule over it."
And they were right. There were only a few human beings there in those days, and those that there were were nothing better than wild animals. The Bear, the Wolf, and the Fox went out hunting, while the Stag grazed by the edge of the fen. The Field Mouse sat outside his hole and ate acorns, and the Beaver built his artistic houses by the river banks.
One day the Bear came trudging along and lay down at full breadth under a great Oak Tree, "Are you there again, you robber?" said the Oak, and shook a lot of withered leaves down over him.
"You should not squander your leaves, my old friend," said the Bear, licking his paws. "That is all the shade you can give against the sun."