Tim ben Grass is Green 



VII 



WITH a bewitching smile, and sweetly suggestive 

 tone, Beatrice, with sketch-book and a new outing 

 gown, looked toward the creek as she said, "I 

 wonder if it is n't cooler over there among the big 

 trees." Not even a graybeard could have re- 

 sisted, and I simply succumbed. What did it 

 matter if it was 90 in the shade, and I had to do 

 all the rowing ? 



We were soon ready for the start, but I let the 

 tide carry us, and used the oars but little. While 

 Beatrice sketched, I looked about in a double 

 sense; for an excuse to go home and at the trees 

 along the creek bank. Some of these, may I say, 

 were wise in their day and generation, in grow- 

 ing so absurdly crooked that no man's ingenuity 

 has solved the problem of making use of them ; 

 and then there were others that have happily been 

 left by the landowners, until now they tower far 

 above the stream and may be seen for miles. 

 There is a shellbark hickory, eighty-two feet high; 

 an elm with a spread of branches over one hun- 

 dred feet, and a tulip-tree and ash that have been 

 side by side for over a century, and are racing still 

 to reach cloudland. But the smaller trees that 

 filled every interspace had here a tropical look. 

 The wild grape and Virginia creeper had climbed 

 to their very tops, and I spied one tall sapling 

 that was laden with bright red berries dangling on 

 130 



