huge to withstand tempests; kings have wainscoated their palace walls 

 with these exquisitely striated woods ; and pictures that were priceless 

 have been framed in their tawny loveliness. Why, no picture can be 

 more beautiful than the graining of oak. To place it on a floor is a 

 sin; for it is like walking on a picture: but to wainscoat stately rooms 

 with it, and swing its perpetual beauty in doors to halls of festival, and 

 to build mantels and line ceilings, that is just and legitimate In 

 seeing a winter oak you see all of the fine lines drawn by the graver's 

 tool of the great God, who has time off to spend in making the oak as 

 beautiful as inlaid work of pearl and onyx. And the great limbs billow 

 out shaggy and fierce, and their photogravure is something to dream of 

 by night. I know a nook near Cawker City, Kansas, a peninsula which 

 is almost an island by the tortuous winding of what used to be a stream 

 in those days when the rains drained them into stream-beds rather than 

 sinking into tilled fields; and here in a country almost devoid of trees, 

 is a bur-oak forest where great oaks grow, some of which fling shadows 

 seventy feet in diameter, and under whose shade a caravan might rest 

 under shadows so dense no ray of sunlight could peer through. This 

 oak-grove is worth making a pilgrimage to see; for I have not often 

 seen its equal anywhere across this continent. When winter winds 

 of might charge down on the forest, then an oak-tree laughs like a 

 lover, and shoots out his hundred furious fists until the storm-winds 

 are abashed. None must think to commiserate this battling giant. 

 Ulysses loved the battle of warring Trojans and stormy seas, but not 

 more than the oak-tree loves its conflict. These winter onsets are 

 better to him than dew, or rain, or gentle spring zephyrs. Through all 

 his huge trunk, fury runs. He drinks wine pressed from the grapes of 

 wrath ; and his huge arms hammer at the wind , and like the sound of 

 winds from the seas in the rigging of the ships, so shrills the wind 

 through the branches of this oaken harp. There is joy to the oak-trees 

 when storm-winds blow. 



Cottonwoods have a fan-top spread out in bare wantonness as if to 

 catch every wind that passed that way. Not summer is in winter 

 cottonwoods; for their summer minstrelsy is as rainfall in the dusk of 

 evenings; but exposing wide expanse of branches to the winds, winter 

 cottonwoods make grave and noble music. I think it strange how 

 .seldom these winter trees have broken branches lying beneath them ; in 

 other words, with what uniformity they conquer the winds. You would 

 not think those long, slender branches, seemingly so disqualified to 



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