16 PREFACE 



a tree with stories beyond the first white man 

 it ever saw; and many a day when I have 

 watched the leading citizens playing marbles 

 in its extensive shadow, I have thought : How 

 many are the interesting stories yoii could tell, 

 of ages passed when you saw the beautiful 

 deer and other wild game gather at your base, 

 of the great pride you must have felt when 

 the old cock grouse hooted from your moss 

 covered limbs in the early breaking of spring 

 and of the interesting councils of war which 

 painted Indians in ancient days convened un- 

 der your spreading old limbs. Who knows 

 but what the great Snohomish, the chief and 

 orator of the Santiams, made your shade a 

 stopping place going up the Columbia to the 

 great council? At last you saw the first white 

 man and his ox team approach, and later 

 make treaty and trade and war with the In- 

 dians ; and at the very last, you find you have 

 been chosen as the center around which men 

 and women of the finest type build a beauti- 

 ful little city that for a time nestled under 

 your very branches for protection. You 

 grew and spread and at last as a mother that 

 had walked the floor nights with her babe. 



