makes men and trees. War is an ingredient of souls, if souls are to 

 come to manhood. Every winter tree is like a man on guard at a 

 dangerous post No wind goes by, however sedate and conciliatory, that 

 the tree does not fling out naked arms of angry might before his face 

 and cry surlily, "Halt, who goes there?" and then the battle is fierce as 

 a Scotch clansman's onset. Winter trees make me proud of their grave 

 and reasonable pugnacity. 



In winter is the time when most people get acquainted, I think. 

 The long evenings, and the shut-in firelight are conciliatory to friend- 

 ship and made for confidences. So it is natural in winter to grow 

 confidential with the trees. They then reveal their secret. Surly as 

 they look, you will not find them so if you will be companionable. Then 

 go out of town (trees stay in town because they are galley slaves 

 chained there). Go into the empty forest where a river runs (if Provi- 

 dence favor you so highly), and spend a day there, building a fire on 

 the sheltered side of some bank where the smoke curls on you, and the 

 delicious odors of the wood exhale, and the flame dances in the twist- 

 ing winds Let the day be gray. Cloudy days are the appropriate days 

 for making friendship with the trees. On open days the sky is too high, 

 too illuminated, there is no background for the trees; and besides the 

 sunlight makes shadow and gives wrong impression of twig, bark, and 

 limb The artists in their studios shut sunlight out. We who love the 

 trees must be as wise as they. When the gray clouds are just above 

 the tree tops, it is as if you looked at every tree against a background 

 of gray granite. A tree has its chance to declare itself as in a confes- 

 sional. There is no shadow ; and no light flames with its torch to make 

 wrong proportion, but it is as if twilight lit your lamp for you. On such 

 a day, wander, lover-like, among the trees, and they will be confidential 

 with you like women talking of their lovers. Give me a gray day with 

 its all-day twilight, and the naked might of forest, and I will not envy 

 kings their coronation. 



A beech-tree is a picture. In the winter its sagging branches with 

 their gray-brown leaves hanging shiveringly, so wizen and little, like a 

 withered old man, and making their pitiful appeal as winds shiver by; 

 and its trunk like a pillar of dusk to hold the porch of the evening up. 

 Friend, if you do not know the beech-trees, you. have one acquaintance- 

 ship to contract wnich will do your life good. In autumn there is a 

 harvest sunlight on the beech leaves very fair to see, but after all the 

 beech trunk is the tree's treasure. I never pass a beech without a 



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