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Editorial 



COMPANIONABLE TREES 



More people than speak about it have found companionship in 

 trees, and have formed special relationships with individual trees. 

 Well, why not ? A tree is a living being in a measure like ourselves, 

 as Bryant has so fully expressed. 



One of the chief attractions of a tree as a friend is that we always 

 know where to find it. Through winter and stimmer, year in and 

 year out, it stands steadfast and ready to greet us, always attuned 

 to our own mood. Of course we do not know in what regard the 

 tree holds us, there being as yet no developed science of tree 

 psychology, but this is a matter of no special importance. It is far 

 more important to us that we give love and companionship 

 ungrudgingly than that we demand these in return, measure for 

 ^measure. It is petty business, being calculating in ones relations, 

 either with folks or with trees. 



In childhood, certain trees played an important part in our daily 

 life. We remember distinctly one warm day in very early spring, 

 when the mosses were green and the scarlet berries of the Mitchella 

 glowed against their verdant vine background, that in the ecstacy 

 of spring happiness and the renewing of old acquaintance, we forgot 

 our Quaker training of composed demeanor and flung glad arms as 

 far as they would reach around the trunk of a great forest grown 

 maple and kissed its unreponsive bark, and then stood back 

 abashed at what seemed a silly act. That maple had giant roots 

 curled chair-wise at the base of its majestic gray bole and it had 

 always seemed a loving motherly tree to the child, who grew up so 



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