5 



THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 



polypody ferns, and their rosettes of lichen, adorning 

 the magnificent old grandfather of the woods with the 

 ornaments of youth and beauty! What a wonderful 

 picturesqueness do these lowly forms of life, crowding 

 around the oak as it grows in years and in size, give to 

 it ! They richly repay the hospitality they receive in 

 the added charm which they impart to the forest patri- 

 arch. They show an exquisite sympathy even with its 

 weaknesses, hiding its defects by their fairy sprays, and 

 covering its dead members with a lovely pall of vege- 

 table velvet. It teaches us thus the touching lesson 

 that the grandest things in nature may be made more 

 beautiful and picturesque by the simplest; as the 

 greatest man may be indebted for his chief happiness 

 to the smiles and the prattle of the little children that 

 climb on his knee. Even to the fairy shapes that 

 played- among these mystic forms of plant-life, when the 

 world was younger and more credulous, the oak was 

 more hospitable than any other tree. The Dryads took 

 their name from it, and flitted in and out among the 

 flickering shadows cast by its leaves upon the ground, 

 and gave to those whose eyes were purged with the 

 eye-salve of faith to see them, glimpses of a realm fairer 

 and brighter than the. common human world of care and 

 toil. And how open to all the flowers and shrubs of 

 the wildwood are its wide-spreading arms ! The grass 

 may grow up to the very foot of its trunk unreproved 

 by any dark frowning shadow cast by its leaves. The 

 hyacinth may make a fragrant mist of blue about its 

 roots, and the primrose need not blanch its sunny 



