178 



ing it. Besides, he makes a point wherever 

 trunk and branches meet. Assuredly the 

 causes o' Christendom might be writ large 

 upon his leaves. 



Jack Ash is a sailor born lithe and tough 

 as becomes one sprung from seed shaped for 

 a true fairy-oar. All the family of Poplars 

 white, blue, yellow are country gentle- 

 men, big, bluff, hearty, upright, and soft of 

 grain. Here stand a dozen, none of whose 

 girths four men's linked hands could span. 



At one side lies the parent trunk fire- 

 scarred, hollow wherein you may stand up- 

 right. A bent, gnarled Sassafras grows in 

 the crumbling stump of it. While the great 

 Poplar towered aloft, the Sassafras clung, 

 half starved, to a cleft in its root a very har- 

 lequin of turns and twists, at which no doubt 

 the monarch of the forest in life was prop- 

 erly amused. Now he lies dead, with the 

 dwarf mopping and mowing above him, draw- 

 ing strength and sustenance from his ruin. 



No doubt you have seen such cases. Life 

 is strangely parallel through all its chan- 

 nels. Some trees, some souls, grow small 

 and crooked, no matter what the environ- 

 ment or maybe because of it. 



Here is Dogwood glowing scarlet in the 

 berry, maugre her snow of blossom. A true 



