278 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [13:7— Oct., 1917 



theless, patiently awaiting my notice, it must have always been 

 standing within the straggling fence that meandered along the 

 straighter foot path cut into the half worn grass and paralleling the 

 open yellow wagon track where no child of my age dared so much 

 as venture. 



Every spring and summer found me at the old farmhouse, and 

 once I spent a whole blessed twelve-month there. It was during 

 this long visit that I established my friendship with the elm tree. 

 I was ten years old and my going and comings between the city 

 and the country had not been few. Yet I had never been able to 

 adjust my city-bred ways to the less formal life of the farm, and as a 

 result many of my hours, and even many of my days, — were far 

 from happy there. One afternoon late in May, I distinctly 

 remember. My sturdier cousins had been more than usually 

 trying and in one of those fits of rage which result from the little 

 tragedies of childhood, I tore out of the house and rushed down the 

 road to the bottom of the hollow. Climbing the fence, I threw 

 myself down at the foot of the tree, too proud to cry, too angry to 

 be articulate, though I trembled with wrath, and could feel the hot 

 blood coursing through my veins. Suddenly I was conscious of a 

 presence, — the presence of the tree. 



In an angle of the rail fence, beneath the green grass, spread out 

 no doubt the far-reaching roots of the great elm. Of them, of 

 course, I had little thought; nor did I pay much attention to the 

 large stones — almost rock-like in size — which some tiller of the soil 

 had removed from the field and scattered there out of the way of his 

 plow. Between these stones there was no inconsiderable amount 

 of rather rank grass, but there was more — there were violets in 

 bloom. I do not know that there is any connection in general 

 between elm trees and violets, but nothing can ever make me 

 believe that my elm tree had not adopted those violets nestling 

 about its roots unto its kindly protecting care. Then and there I 

 woke to a new truth — the Greeks were right when they believed 

 that every tree had a soul, that some dryad made her home within 

 the shelter of its roughened bark. Timidly yet eagerly, I lifted my 

 gaze up the straight trunk, on through the branches until it lost 

 itself in the mazes of the feathering of the farthermost twigs. The 

 light wind swayed the leaves, and their faint rustling was as a voice 

 — the voice of the nymph — the voice of the tree which had so long 

 awaited my coming and my tardy love. 



