jVT OW the boys see that each tree tells 

 its own .story as it grows. They 



have been shown that the breaking off of 

 the top will make a crooked trunk, no 

 matter how hard the tree tries to grow 

 straight again, and that every wound the 

 little sapling gets is written some way 

 in the history of the grown tree, no mat- 

 ter how big it may get to be. The scar- 

 red old pine on the mountain top is bent 

 fpCJgf'/' by tne gales and snows just as an old 

 man is bent by the hard work that he 

 has had to do all his life. The limbs on 

 the side toward the cold, harsh winds 

 are short and twisted; those on the 

 sheltered side can grow to be longer and 

 straighter. The scars made by the ax 

 on an old trunk may be entirely grown 

 Xm*d over, with scarce an outward sign that 

 there is a tell-tale mark on the wood in- 

 side. But when that tree is cut into 

 ^^5S?5 boards, the verv ax m a r ks put there a 

 hundred years before will show plainly, 

 and may make the board that is cut 

 from that place in the trunk unfit for 

 use in a fine floor. This, too, is the very 

 least of the trouble, even when the cut 

 is healed over with a clean scar. But if 

 the germ of a tree disease gets into the 

 wound while it is open, decay may 

 spread and the whole trunk may become 

 rotten and hollow even though it may 

 appear sound on the outside. 



Each tree then, keeps its own diary, 

 and it writes in it every day the record 

 of the season, whether it be moist and 

 mild with an annual layer of good 

 growth, or whether it be dry and trying, 

 so that the plant can store up very little 

 food. The lean years are all set down 

 just as they come, and the year of the 

 big freeze may leave a frost-crack that 

 never heals. 



Before the whites came here, two lit- 

 tle Indian boys were shooting at an 

 eagle's feather stuck in the rough bark 

 of a great hemlock and made dents that 

 were never wholly lost. One of the flints 

 broke off, perhaps about the time that 

 Columbus discovered America, and a 

 steel band-saw lost three teeth when it 

 struck that piece of arrowhead in the 

 saw-mill some 415 years later. 



TF the little pines, which were marred 

 - 1 by the present-day boys, should have 

 been left, no matter how old they might 

 grow, they would still show a crook in 

 the grain where the top had been broken 

 out and a side branch had tried to 

 straighten up to take the place of the 

 lost leader. The broken-off side branches 

 would leave little knots, if they did no 

 worse in giving a chance for insects or 

 diseases to make a greater injury. 



These are some of the lessons that the 

 boys learned from the building of their 

 Indian hut. They are not the most im- 

 portant ones, however. What I hope 

 they have learned is that they must never 

 touch the property of other people, that 

 they must respect the rights of others, 

 that they must work no injury to tree 

 or branch wherever it may be found, ex- 

 cept as they have a right that comes 

 from their own ownership, and that 

 even then they will give full thought as 

 to how much the cutting of their own 

 trees may act on the good or ill of all of 

 the rest of the people. 



TN the meantime, they have mortgaged 

 * their own future to the extent of at 

 least one Liberty Bond, and have given 

 the Old Man the thrill of knowing how 

 much it costs to pay for the work of a 

 high-priced landscape architect, 



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