choicest cut leaves, strong and rugged 

 in places as the unbarked trunk and 

 gnarled roots at the ground's surface. 

 Is there any other place, except the 

 seaside, where hours are so short and 

 moments so swift as in the forest? 

 Where else except in the rare commu 

 nion of those friends much loved, do 

 we awake from pleasure, whose calm 

 flow is without a ripple, into surprise 

 that whole hours are gone which we 

 thought but just begun blossomed and 

 dropped, which we thought but just 

 budding? 



Thus do you stand, noble elms! 

 Lifted up so high are your topmost 

 boughs that no indolent birds care to 

 seek you, and only those of nimble 

 wings, and they with unwonted beat, 

 that love exertion and aspire to sing 

 where none sing higher. Aspiration! 

 so heaven gives it pure as flames to the 

 noble bosom. But debased with pas 

 sion and selfishness it comes to be only 

 Ambition! 



It was in the presence of this pas 

 ture-elm, which we name the Queen, 

 that we first felt to our very marrow 

 that we had indeed become owners of 

 the soil! It was with a feeling of awe 

 that we looked up into its face, and 

 when I whispered to myself, " This is 

 mine," there was a shrinking as if there 

 were sacrilege in the very thought of 

 property in such a creature of God as 

 this cathedral-topped tree! Does a 

 man bare his head in some old church? 

 So did 1, standing in the shadow of this 

 regal tree, and looking up into that 

 completed glory, at which three hundred 

 years have been at work with noiseless 

 fingers! What was I in its presence 

 but a grasshopper? My heart said, " I 

 may not call thee property, and that 

 property mine! Thou belongest to the 

 air. Thou art the child of summer. 

 Thou art the mighty temple where 

 birds praise God. Thou belongest to 

 no man's hand, but to all men's eyes 

 that do love beauty, and that have 

 learned through beauty to behold God! 

 Stand, then, in thine own beauty and 

 grandeur! I shall be a lover and a 



protector, to keep drought from thy 

 roots, and the axe from thy trunk." 



For, remorseless men there are crawl 

 ing yet upon the face of the earth, 

 smitten blind and inwardly dead, whose 

 only thought of a tree of ages is, that 

 it is food for the axe and the saw! 

 These are the wretches of whom the 

 scripture speaks: "A man was famous 

 according as he had lifted up axes upon 

 the thick trees." 



Thus famous, or rather infamous, was 

 the last owner but one, before me, of 

 this farm. Upon the crown of the hill, 

 just where an artist would have planted 

 them, had he wished to have them ex 

 actly in the right place, grew some two 

 hundred stalwart and ancient maples, 

 beeches, ashes and oaks, a narrow belt- 

 like forest, forming a screen from the 

 northern and western winds in winter, 

 and a harp of endless music for the 

 summer. The wretched owner of this 

 farm, tempted of the devil, cut down 

 the whole blessed band and brother 

 hood of trees, that he might fill his 

 pocket with two pitiful dollars a cord 

 for the wood! Well, his pocket was the 

 best part of him. The iron furnaces 

 have devoured my grove, and their 

 huge stumps that stood like gravestones 

 have been cleared away, that a grove 

 may be planted in the same spot, for 

 the next hundred years to nourish into 

 the stature and glory of that which is 

 gone. 



In many other places I find the 

 memorials of many noble trees slain; 

 here a hemlock that carried up its eter 

 nal green a hundred feet into the winter 

 air; there, a huge double- trunked chest 

 nut, dear old grandfather of hundreds 

 of children that have for generations 

 clubbed its boughs, or shook its nut- 

 laden top, and laughed and shouted as 

 bushels of chestnuts rattled down. 

 Now, the tree exists only in the form of 

 loop-holed posts and weather-browned 

 rails. I do hope the fellow got a sliver" 

 in his fingers every time he touched the 

 hemlock plank, or let down the bars 

 made of those chestnut rails! 



31 



