FRUITFUL TREES. 



I HAVE been out under a tree all day. The winds 

 have talked into its leaves, and the sunlight has 

 flashed its message through the quivering foli- 

 age, and I have listened with straining ears to catch, 

 if I might, the wisdom which the venerable sages 

 of the wood were gathering from the breezes and 

 the sunshine. I am sure I must have interpreted 

 somewhat of all that was said, for there came to my 

 mind a long story, drawing my thought out toward 

 the trees, and bringing home to my consciousness 

 things I had never thought before. I was borne forth 

 in fancy to the homes and the cities of men, to their 

 busy, reckless, tireless, intense, and pushing life. I 

 could see, by a flash of intuition, how closely the life 

 of the trees, their functions and their influence, are 

 linked and bound to the life of the whole world and 

 of man himself. 1 realised as in a vision how near 

 the trees lie to the fountain-heads of those streams of 

 power and resource which bear to man his largest 

 riches. 



I do not mean just the obvious uses of the trees 

 after they are slain and harvested into men's lumber- 

 yards and sawmills and planing-factories. Every- 



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