26 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside 



The pine is a prime soldier in the army of the 

 forest, rising tall and straight to a gracefully droop- 

 ing crown of sprays, which in blooming-time is set 

 with resinous diamonds. Swayed by the breeze in 

 the sunbeams, they flash and sparkle, disappearing 

 and reappearing at an angle of the light. He unites 

 his strength with his fellows to resist the tempest 

 and toss it skyward — and it must be a tornado of 

 very great power that is able to lay that Mace- 

 donian phalanx low. The soft breathing of the 

 pines in the wind high overhead appears to have 

 been attributed by primitive men to the wings of 

 flying spirits. The word employed by them to 

 designate spirit or soul was breath. When Jehovah 

 came to reinforce the army of Saul, his movement 

 was heard as "a going in the tops of the mulberry 

 trees." The balsam gave to church architecture 

 the fretted and pinnacled spire pointing to heaven 

 as the source of its sanctity. The maple, antici- 

 pating the night of winter, borrows its colors from 

 the setting sun. Moses received a revelation from 

 God from a tree which, while it was burning, was 

 unconsumed, waving its branches of brilliant colors 

 as if the tints of heaven had descended upon the 

 earth. Bryant describes the arches of the forest as 

 God's first temples, which they were, as they were 

 man's, and to them he resorted to find sanctity for 

 his worship. When he would build a temple, he 

 sought in the forest forms which would most nearly 

 conform to the ideals of the divine, and which he 



