LIKE A TREE 



souls, in the hardness of our modern life ! 



It was my privilege to spend a week or so this 

 summer among the big trees of our great Cali- 

 fornia groves an experience of a life-time for 

 me, and out of that experience I come to you 

 to bring some lessons which I feel sure the trees 

 spoke to me, as I lived with them, as I got a bit 

 acquainted with them, as I came to know them 

 and felt that, perchance, they knew me and spoke 

 to me. 



So, in simple fashion, I learned these things: 

 First, it seems to me that the tree is like a man, 

 and a man is like a tree, in that the real man and 

 the great tree, each of them have a certain won- 

 derful dignity of character. I mean, now, real 

 dignity, not a simulated dignity; not a false dig- 

 nity, a real dignity. There is a dignity, so-called, 

 among men sometimes that is only a sort of super- 

 ciliousness ; there is a dignity that suggests 

 only an aloofness and remoteness, a cold- 

 ness ; there is a dignity that is in the 

 manner only, that leaning over backward, 

 ceases to become dignity at all. Now a tree, al- 

 ways possesses a dignity of its own, and never 

 yields that dignity because of unfortunate posi- 

 tion. How often a man is toppled over from his 

 position of dignity because circumstances are 

 against him; just because life is not what he 

 would have it, or as he planned it, or is not pleas- 

 ant to him. His dignity departs, and he becomes 



