A GROUP OF BEECHES 



By Adklla Prkscott. 



IT was on a bleak winter day that I first made the ac- 

 quaintance of my beeches. I say "My beeches" but they are 

 mine only by right of discovery; another owns the ground on 

 which they stand, but even so, I have the best of it, for I doubt 

 if the owner of the ground has ever really seen the trees, 

 though he must have passed them many times, w-hile for me 

 even the thought of them is a delight. 



On this particular day I had quite definitely made up my 

 mind that life was not worth living, for hepaticas seemed very 

 far away and even strawberries were only a vague memory. 

 The world seemed in a very chaotic condition and while I did 

 not for a moment suppose that figs would ever grow on 

 thistles it seemed quite believable that the reverse might oc- 

 cur. But after I found the beeches and had listened for 

 awhile to the cheerful rustle of their crisp brown leaves as 

 they talked of the failures and successes of the last season 

 and laid their plans for the next, I went home and with 

 florist's catalogues all about me I made a list of all the things 

 I wanted, even though I knew 1 could not get them and had 

 no place to put them if I could. 



These beeches are not by any means fine specimens of their 

 kind, for they grow on the side of a steep bank, where they 

 have scanty nourishment and a precarious foothold. There 

 are fifteen or twenty of them varying in size from slender 

 saplings to one or two eight or ten inches in diameter. I have 

 never seen nuts on them and fancy that up to the present time 

 they have had quite enough to do to secure their own liveli- 

 hood, without making any effort to perpetuate their species. 



