And the elm-tree is always bewitching. In summer, when you can 

 tell this tree far as you can catch the contour across the fields by the 

 grace of its pose, and its rhythmic swaying of branches as keeping time 

 to music we do not hear, in winter the tree has its winter array No 

 tree in our woods has the beautiful network of branches the elm has. 

 Flung on the snow or seen against the blue sky or gray, it is as graceful 

 as any tree that spreads under the sky. Every branch has its own 

 household of tracery and delicacies of invention, for you shall find the 

 unexpected in the elm-tree's goings. No palm branch waved at temple 

 or at triumph, is fair as an elm branch. You can feast your eyes on it 

 as on the traceries of a frosty window-pane. To try to wrestle an elm- 

 tree down (despite its beauty, for beauty and virility do not often coin- 

 cide), seems something the storm-winds of summer or winter do not 

 have audacity to attempt. Elms have a firmer hold on the earth than 

 an oak. They dig for rootage deep and far. They pre-empt the land 

 where they sink their anchorage of roots. I do not recall to have seen 

 an elm-tree uprooted by tempests, though I have seen tall pine-trees 

 fallen like dead soldiers, and oaks lying, half-fallen or wholly, like a man 

 sorely wounded; but elms have a tenacity of fiber and a sagacity in 

 ramification of roots which all but defy storm-winds. Those who 

 would kill an elm, girdle it, though I resent their cowardly practice. It 

 seems so dastardly to open the veins of a man you have not the courage 

 to face nor the force to kill. The Cambridge elm, with its glory of 

 history seen through its leaves and sitting beneath its shadow, is scarcely 

 so engaging as the elms of the ordinary forest; for they are so beautiful 

 as to need no wealth of historical association to make them fair. 



The bark of elms, in corrugation and in tint, is enough like the ruts 

 of dry country roads to be accused of plagiarism. Who knows but the 

 elm has wrapped about him a cloak worn by dusty summer? There is 

 in any case a dusty-road look to his garments, for which he must be 

 held to account. I like the fit and tone of his garment. 



The oak-tree has the allegiancy of the centuries; for beneath its 

 shadows the Druids worshiped and built altars, as if it were half-deity, 

 or more. Words are weak as tears when they essay to tell an oak- 

 tree's epic. Bashan was land of oaks as Lebanon was land of cedars 

 but oaks are freesoilers. They live across the world They voyage to 

 all shores, and stand ready to greet the colonist when he sets foot upon 

 the strand. They met the Puritans, and DeSoto and Coronado, and 

 gave them welcome. Great ships have been debtors to them for hulls, 



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