THE WOODS. 155 



A good many familiar trees have disappeared from 

 the old woods. I was out the other day, and could not 

 but notice the absence of some of those most fondly 

 cherished gone forever; as 



" when some fond and spiritual bell 

 Tolled in the memory, ceases." 



The big pignut is gone, the tallest tree in the woods, 

 together with some of the largest hickories and oaks, 

 and the beeches with initials cut upon them long ago, 

 all made over into saw logs, or blown down by the 

 storms, or cut into wood for the winter fire. Some 

 of the big black walnuts, however, under which 

 the boys studied their lessons in former days, have now 

 been made into valued furniture: as into decorative 

 mantels; or into polished tables, at one of which I 

 daily break my fast; but one, especially, that I think of, 

 into an exquisitely hand-carved Shakespeare cabinet, 

 adorned, in delicately wrought relief, upon its doors, 

 with carvings of the hawthorne and a sprig of oak 

 from Windsor Woods, and its sides modeled with 

 Puck's and Perdita's flowers, with a scrolled inscription 

 of Ophelia's saying, "There's rosemary, that's for re- 

 membrance; . . . there is pansies, that 's for 

 thoughts," in surface work upon its face, and paintings 

 of Touchstone and Audrey in the Forest of Arden on 

 its panels the whole surmounted with Shakespeare's 

 bust, and the cabinet itself being the repository of 

 valued Shakespearean relics, with many sets of his 

 plays, and various books and lives relating to his work. 

 Thus the old woods has contributed to the refinements 

 and aesthetics and amenities of life, as well as to the 

 living necessities of lumber and fuel. 



