cliqueish folk (a thing I can not praise since it is quite un-American). 

 They are, moreover, lovers of ease, and scarcely working folk; but brave 

 aristocrats they are, stately as Colonial dames, and as unbending as 

 royal etiquette. But they held to the river and its valley. Only once 

 did I see a dwarf on a hillside not many feet above the level of the water, 

 and it was ashamed and seedy like a poor relation and expatriated. 

 Sycamores can not rough it, and unless planted there will not grow on 

 uplands, but when planted thrive admirably. Of their own liking they 

 will not attempt unaccustomed fields. I have, at rare intervals, seen 

 them climb up a bluff, but it was as if they had walked there in their 

 sleep. The second strange thing about sycamores is their habits of 

 dress. The habit of putting on thick garments, as other folks do in the 

 cold season when winds are keen, and all agree with Hamlet, "It is a 

 nipping and an eager air," sycamores will have nothing of They don 

 their heavy garments in summer, and strip them to the skin in winter. 

 I think that one of the strangest freaks of freakish nature Even Indians 

 are not so outrageous of the rights of winter. What evolutionist (allwise 

 as they are and omniscient beyond their Maker), can explain such a 

 performance on the theory of the survival of the fittest? Summer is 

 the time for sycamores and other people to strip for bathing in the 

 streams, but winter bathing why, my friends, the sycamores, you shock 

 me and you make me shiver. I feel cold with my clothes on, and you 

 are naked as Greek wrestlers. What a talent for individuality of pro- 

 cedure these sycamores have! We must allow that they have inde- 

 pendency in their character. In autumn, when winter throws out a 

 premonitory hoar frost to signify he is in the neighborhood, then the 

 sycamores begin to disrobe. They take off their garments by stealth, 

 as a maniac does. You can not, unless you are a close observer and 

 look very narrowly, find a shred of their bark under the trees, and when 

 they are done with their denudation you will probably not find one scrap 

 of their garments. Watch them and see. They are strange folks. I 

 watch them as if they were in politics. Then when they are as nude as 

 nakedness, they are as beautiful as morning. Not the pilaster of a 

 temple, snow-white under radiant skies of Italy is so white as these 

 sycamore pillars. They stand tall as if they were hewn from ice-drifts, 

 or snow-drifts, or marble-quarries. Sometimes, however, they are not 

 snow-white, but a sort of shaded green, a flesh green, as I may say, for 

 they look for all the world like flesh, and stand faint emerald against the 

 sky like a forecast of spring. But whether flesh green or marble white, 



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