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woodsman's axe. Yet another uplifts his 

 dense, pale column hard, fine, close of 

 grain beset on every hand with drooping, 

 viny branches. 



Do you not hear them shouting, " For 

 Earth our mother," as or light or dark, or 

 tall or branchy they do battle with the pow- 

 ers of the air? Truly, their locked arms 

 are a shield guarding her tender breast 

 alike from sun or frost. And what queen- 

 mother might not pride her in such serried 

 array of good, tall warrior - sons ? ready 

 to dare alike the wind's wild wrath, the 

 lightning's scathe. If they fall she has 

 but to lap them in her soft, cool breast ; 

 and from death shall spring the resurrection 

 the light -the life. 



Ah ha ! Here is Sir Walnut. The rabid- 

 est Red Republican of the wood cannot deny 

 him a title as his right. By grace of en- 

 vironment he is either knight or courtier. 

 Here in the forest depths he soars columnar 

 a pillar of sylvan state. It is fifty feet, if 

 one, to his feathery crown of boughs. Giv- 

 en room o' the fields, he will branch and 

 burgeon until a regiment might shelter and 

 feast in his shade. 



There is suave grandeur in the rise of his 

 boughs, the down-dropping of his twigs and 



