WILD APPLE TREES 95 



air of maturity than they had before. Coming 

 back in spring you are apt to sorrow over the 

 wrecks which the winter has wrought. Last 

 winter's gales and deep snows, and more than 

 all the ice storms, have left havoc behind them 

 whereby you may trace their durance and their 

 intensity. Tall birches whose resiliency never 

 before failed them were so bowed beneath these 

 storm burdens that they still remain with upper 

 branches sweeping the ground, like white slaves 

 sculptured in graceful but profound obeisance 

 before a storm king that has long since swept on 

 with all his retinue. It is strange to see cedars 

 that have always seemed unbendable models of 

 primness and rectitude bowed and distorted in 

 groups by the same resistless force. Very heavy 

 and long continuing must have been the ice on 

 these to thus permanently crook their red heart- 

 wood. The heavy brand of the Northern win- 

 ter yet marks them for his own. 



Yet the pastures are so glad with May that it 

 is easy to forget sorrow for the passing old in 

 joy over the surgent beauty of new life. It is 

 easy now to believe what the botanists tell us — 

 that flower and leaf are but slightly differentiated 

 forms of the same impulse of growth, grading 



