194 ARBOR DAY 



straight, perhaps ninety feet high, and four thick 

 at the butt. How strong, vital, enduring! How 

 dumbly eloquent! What suggestions of imper- 

 turbability and being, as against the human trait of 

 mere seeming. Then the qualities, almost emo- 

 tional, palpably artistic, heroic, of a tree; so inno- 

 cent and harmless, yet so savage. It is, yet says 

 nothing. How it rebukes, by its tough and equable 

 serenity, all weathers, this gusty-tempered little 

 whiffet, man, that runs indoors at a mite of rain 

 or snow. Science (or rather half-way science) 

 scoffs at reminiscence of dryad and hamadryad, and 

 of trees speaking. But, if they don't, they do as 

 well as most speaking, writing, poetry, sermons 

 or rather they do a great deal better. I should say 

 indeed that those old dryad reminiscences are quite 

 as true as any, and profounder than most remin- 

 iscences we get. ("Cut this out," as the quack 

 mediciners say, and keep by you.) Go and sit in 

 a grove or woods, with one or more of those voice- 

 less companions, and read the foregoing and think. 



THE BEAUTY OF TREES 



BY WILSON FLAGG 



IT is difficult to realize how great a part of all 

 that is cheerful and delightful in the recollections 

 of our own life is associated with trees. They are 



