LIKE A TREE 



would have to go back home again, denied the 

 privilege of seeing a big tree; and home again 

 for him meant back to Western Nebraska. Do 

 you know what that means Western Nebraska? 

 It means not a tree; it means fence-posts; it 

 means something that has been transplanted; no 

 dignity, no majesty of tree life ; no wide-spread 

 limbs to shade the earth and comfort the soul. 

 The boy felt in his innermost soul that he was 

 being robbed of something. And here was his 

 mother, hurrying on to San Francisco, anxious 

 to get again to a big city and to a big hotel, into 

 a big theatre or a big department store. The boy 

 wanted to go up among the big trees. He was 

 right; he was being robbed! The boy ought to 

 have had an unforgettable, life-stamping experi- 

 ence from meeting the big trees and getting ac- 

 quainted with them. He was being denied that, 

 was being hustled back to Nebraska, with only 

 the unproven fairy story that in California there 

 was a big tree, that you could drive a team of 

 horses through! 



So I say, we may thank God that the experi- 

 ence of knowing the big trees has come to us. 

 Mark you, I did not say seeing them ; I said 

 knowing them, for I want you to keep in mind 

 this, that the tree has a character, that the soul 

 of the tree can speak to the soul of the man, if 

 there is anything of the poet in him. God help 

 us if the poetry has all been squeezed out of our 



