It was a chilly winter Saturday. Though the winds were cold, the sunshine was bright and warm. After dinner Jacob put on his overcoat and new red mittens and went, as he often did, with his father, who was sexton of Evergreen cemetery. While his father was busy Jacob amused himself.
He had never before noticed how bare the great trees looked. Their limbs reached out like hundreds of crooked arms between him and the blue sky. As he looked around here and there he could see a tree wearing a dark green coat. Most of them were small, but some were tall and pointed. A pretty good sized, umbrella-shaped one grew near where his father was digging a grave.
Full of boyish life and spirits he ran to it playfully shouting: “I am a squirrel hunting a nut and will climb up among your branches.” But he tried in vain. The lowest limbs were so high above his head that he could not reach them.
“Never mind,” said he, “I will hunt a nut on the ground.”
Dropping on all fours he began to crawl around. Soon his hand came down upon something hard under the dead leaves which covered the ground. Now he thought he had really found a nut. It was roundish, with blunt spines and woody, and like no nut which he knew. Hunting a loose brick he cracked it upon a stone. Two or three little round things with gauzy wings dropped out.
This roused his curiosity. He now searched round and round for others. He spied a small branch which had broken off and dropped to the ground. As he snatched it up an end whirled round, striking his face. “How you stick!” cried he. He pulled off a mitten to feel what was so sharp. He noticed that the branch was bare, black and full of scars except at the end of each branchlet, where bunches of green sharp needles about as large as his mother’s darning needles were growing.
“Why, old tree,” said he, “where are your leaves?”
Now the tree heard every word which Jacob said but it could not make Jacob hear its answers.
At the tip of each branchlet was a pink bud, and near some of these was a little, tender thing about the shape of, though smaller, than the English sparrow’s egg. These he could pinch into pieces. But lower down on the branchlets, among the queer needles, were others not so large nor so dry as the odd fruit which he had found on the ground. They were not so easily destroyed. He picked them off and put them in his pockets.
“You’re a funny tree! Why do you not have nuts which hungry boys can eat?”