Impressions 



food enough for them, as the flycatchers and 

 red-starts can testify. 



On the eighth of the month, a man came to 

 the " Three Beeches " to hear the Carolina 

 wren. It is the one bird I would have promised 

 a sight of, without hesitation. That day none 

 were seen or heard, and none since, until to- 

 day, the fourteenth. Comment is unnecessary. 



I am ^sensible, this quiet afternoon, of a pres- 

 ence that distinctly influences me, although I 

 am, outwardly, quite alone. I think I never 

 come to this grand old oak but I have the same 

 feeling. It is an oak worthy of a long walk to 

 see. Still, all unmindful of the sad changes 

 going on about it, it looks out upon the world 

 with all the majesty of kingship in its noblest 

 sense. An oak, a forest monarch when the In- 

 dian filed along the narrow trail that is still to 

 be traced near it; a witness to the struggles of 

 the colonists while there was yet an unbroken 

 wilderness about them; and still marking the 

 changes that the restless energy of man brings 

 to pass. It is a long look backward from the 

 electric railway to the Indian 's trail, yet the life 

 of this old oak more than encompasses it alL 



85 



