282 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS 



fifty years old before they will furnish pencil 

 wood, the value of the experiment is still un- 

 proven. 



But all this is by the way and is not to be 

 compared with the joy the red cedars give to the 

 pasture world just by being there and sending 

 forth the beneficence of their personality upon 

 all who come. They make the finest nesting 

 places for the birds in summer. They feed them 

 in autumn and in the winter's fiercest cold they 

 wrap the warm blanket of their bronze foliage 

 about them. Nor do I blame the Indians for 

 investing them with strange powers. In the sun- 

 shine of midday they may seem merely friendly 

 little trees of the pasture. If you will walk 

 among them as dusk deepens you may feel their 

 commonplace characteristics slip from them and 

 the deep mystery of being begin to express itself. 

 Then they seem like tribes of the elder world, a 

 connecting link perhaps between the forest and 

 the red men who but a few centuries ago in- 

 habited it, far more real at such a time than the 

 shadowy memories of these vanished inhabitants. 



