THE 



NATURE-STUDY REVIEW 



Vol. 13 October, 1917 No. 7 



My Tree 



Elmer J. Bailey 



Assistant Professor in English, Cornell University 



I do not know when I first made acquaintance with my tree, — 

 certainly not until a long time after I had at least become conscious 

 of its existence. A city boy, I made my earliest visit to the country 

 in the summer of my fourth or fifth year, spending a week or more 

 in a low, white gambr el-roofed farmhouse standing half way up 

 the slope of a long eastward looking hill. At the foot of that slope, 

 many, many years before my birth,^ — many, many years before 

 m}^ father's birth indeed, — an elm tree had taken up its abode. 

 In the days of my childhood therefore, what had once been but a 

 sapling stood forth a stately tree, half concealing its sturdy upward 

 reaching branches in the dehcate greenery of its almost lacelike 

 fohage. Beautiful it was in every way, for it stood alone in solitary 

 grandeur and grace at the bottom of a Httle hollow into which the 

 dusty public highway slowly descended only to climb rapidly up 

 the abrupter slope beyond. Still altho I often wandered back and 

 forth upon that road, passing and repassing the friendly elm tree, I 

 cannot now recall that on my first visit to the country — or even on 

 my second or third, — did I give it so much as a thought. Never- 



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