on 



The old pine's enormous weight caused him 

 to fall heavily, and he came to earth with tre- 

 mendous force and struck on an elbow of one of 

 his stocky arms. The force of the fall not only 

 broke the trunk in two, but badly shattered it. 

 The damage to the log was so general that the 

 sawmill-man said it would not pay to saw it into 

 lumber and that it could rot on the spot. 



I had come a long distance for the express 

 purpose of deciphering Old Pine's diary as the 

 scroll of his life should be laid open in the saw- 

 mill. The abandonment of the shattered form 

 compelled the adoption of another way of get- 

 ting at his story. Receiving permission to do 

 as I pleased with his remains, I at once began 

 to cut and split both the trunk and the limbs 

 and to transcribe their strange records. Day 

 after day I worked. I dug up the roots and thor- 

 oughly dissected them, and with the aid of a 

 magnifier I studied the trunk, the roots, and the 

 limbs. 



I carefully examined the base of his stump, 

 and in it I found 1047 rings of growth! He had 

 lived through a thousand and forty-seven mem- 



36 



