lord] a wise old oak 285 



"I can remember when I was bom, and how frightened I was 

 when I pushed my first folded leaf up thru the warm soil and into 

 the sunlight. My mother was there, but she was far above my 

 head and could not help me, for we trees are not like you children — 

 from the very first we have to fight our own way in the world. 

 And if we fail we must wither and go back into the earth and rest 

 for a long time, and gather strength to try again. Oh! it was a 

 wonderful game that we played, my brothers and I, and the rest 

 of the little trees around us. You children wrestle for a little while 

 to see who is strongest and run a little ways to see who is most fleet, 

 but we little oaks wrestled quietly among ourselves all day long, 

 and were always racing upwards toward light and room, the prizes 

 overhead. All day we would wrestle and race among ourselves, so 

 quietly that you mi2:ht not have known it, and at night, when the 

 sun went down, we were quiet and slept standing, side by side, so 

 that we might start our game again as soon as the sun arose. So 

 wfe lived those first summers and when fall came I stood highest of 

 all my age — taller, too, than some of my big brothers, — and I had 

 the most leaves to throw upon the ground, — leaves that shrivel 

 and grow brown and disappear in the warm earth when the winds 

 are cold, but which come back sometime and are green again, per- 

 haps on some other tree. And some of the little trees with which I 

 had raced and wrestled were not strong enough. These withered 

 and followed their leaves back into the ground. I missed them, 

 but I was not sad, for I knew that they would come back again as 

 soon as they were rested. We trees know that we can never die 

 and stay dead; that is one way in which we are wiser than a lot 

 of people. 



"And so it went thru all the springs and summers, thru all the 

 falls and winters, which followed. We raced and wrestled so that 

 our leaves might be above all the rest and catch a lot of sunHght, 

 and make a lot of starch. And underground our roots grew bigger 

 and stronger and pushed out faster and further, so as to reach the 

 water and other things that run up our trunks and turn the starch 

 of our leaves into sugar, which we eat. I was strong and a fast 

 grower — of all the young oaks I was tallest; I got the most sun- 

 light on my leaves, and so made the most starch and sugar, and 

 had the most to eat. I was tall and straight in those days ; acorns 

 grew among my leaves and fell, and went into the soil, — and 

 presently racing, wrestling children of my own were all about my 



