A PITCH-PINE MEDITATION. 187 



ness," but it would be a shame not to add 

 that it is also most excellent to smell of. 

 If I am to judge, scarcely any odor wears 

 better than this of growing turpentine. 

 There is something unmistakably clean and 

 wholesome about it. The very first whiff 

 savors of salubrity. " The belief in the 

 good effects of pine forests in cases of 

 phthisis is quite unanimous " (so I read the 

 other day in a scientific journal), "and the 

 clinical evidence in favor of their beneficial 

 influence is unquestioned." Who can tell 

 whether our New England climate, with 

 all its consumptive provocations, might not 

 be found absolutely unendurable but for 

 the amelioration furnished by this gener- 

 ously diffused terebinthine prophylactic ? 



When all is said, however, nothing else 

 about the pitch-pine ever affects me so 

 deeply as its behavior after man has done 

 his worst upon it. It would appear to 

 have some vague sense of immortality, some 

 gropings after a resurrection. The tree was 

 felled in the autumn, and the trunk cut up 

 ignominiously into cord-wood ; but in the 

 spring the prostrate logs begin to put forth 

 scattered tufts of bright green leaves, life 



