40 SIGNS AND SEASONS 



erogeneoiis; they have greater versatility, more re- 

 sources. The pine has but one idea, and that is to 

 mount heavenward by regular steps, — tree of fate, 

 tree of dark shadows and of mystery. 



The pine is the tree of silence. Who was the 

 Goddess of Silence ? Look for her altars amid the 

 pines, — silence above, silence below. Pass from 

 deciduous woods into pine woods of a windy day, 

 and you think the day has suddenly become calm. 

 Then how silent to the foot! One walks over a 

 carpet of pine needles almost as noiselessly as over 

 the carpets of our dwellings. Do these halls lead 

 to the chambers of the great, that all noise should 

 be banished from them? Let the designers come 

 here and get the true pattern for a carpet, — a soft 

 yellowish brown with only a red leaf, or a bit of 

 gray moss, or a dusky lichen scattered here and 

 there; a background that does not weary or bewil- 

 der the eye, or insult the ground-loving foot. 



How friendly the pine-tree is to man, — so do- 

 cile and available as timber, and so warm and pro- 

 tective as shelter ! Its balsam is salve to his wounds, 

 its fragrance is long life to his nostrils; an abiding, 

 perennial tree, tempering the climate, cool as mur- 

 muring Avaters in summer and like a wrapping of 

 fur in winter. 



The deciduous trees are inconstant friends that 

 fail us when adverse winds do blow; but the pine 

 and all its tribe look winter cheerily in the face, 

 tossing the snow, masquerading in his arctic livery, 

 in fact holding high carnival from fall to spring. 



