Impressions 



stirs the few, crisp, frost-bitten leaves to life. 

 Their rustling is not remote from words. The 

 oak is talking or I am wool-gathering. It is a 

 distinction without a difference. Oaks of ear- 

 lier centuries are reminiscential. It was so to- 

 day. It was all about the sprouted acorn that 

 escaped its myriad foes; of a sapling among 

 giants that became a giant among saplings; 

 then from self to its surroundings, to the Indian 

 who long since passed away and the colonist 

 that came; and after that the day of the sov- 

 ereign people of an unkinged country and all 

 that it has cost since to reach the present. All 

 this and a vigorous tree still. 



Herein the oak is happier than the man. It 

 has grown great without great effort. All that 

 man does but opens the door to more that must 

 be done and men so often die early, old beyond 

 their years. 



A winter-day walk need not be a walk in vain ; 

 not, at least, if the wool gathered by the way- 

 side proves worth the gathering. 



No hand outreaching from another world has 

 ever beckoned me to follow it and find myself a 

 stranger in a strange land. I have never heard 



33 



