58 Trails to Woods and Waters 



ing car wheels and listening all day to the 

 click of steel rails. 



" Maybe in the nursery little feet shall 

 patter over me and baby tongues shall prattle 

 above me. 



" Or, if a higher destiny should happen to 

 be mine, I might be the sounding board in a 

 piano, that the master musician shall play. 

 Then again would I vibrate with the joy of 

 spring and the flush of summer. Or still 

 better, the violin maker may find a piece of 

 wood hundreds of years hence, that was once 

 taken from my fiber. He may fashion a 

 wonderful instrument from it. Then indeed 

 would I again hear the wind in the pine 

 needles and the melancholy dirge of autumn. 



" So you see I am not dead, but changed 

 when I am sawed up into boards." 



"We want that log, sonny," said the 

 sawyer, who had trundled out the car so 

 quietly that the dreamer on the log had not 

 heard him. 



The boy scrambled down from his perch 

 and watched the men roll the great log on to 



