TREES 261 



looked ! How my nostrils could inhale again the aroma 

 of the chips hacked with a jack knife from its roots! 

 And here, on the next page, was the Emerson oak, 

 growing between the barn and the house, and throwing 

 mottled shadows over both a mighty spread, indeed! 

 I could hear the horses stamping in the barn, I could 

 smell the hay, I could savour again the coolness of the 

 shade as we dropped beneath it on our way home from 

 the swimming hole. That oak and the old Emerson 

 homestead were unthinkable apart. If I, who merely 

 lived a mile on down the road, could so thrill to a picture 

 of that tree in after years, what, I reflected, must be the 

 affection in which an Emerson holds it? Is it still 

 there? Surely it must be, for the oak outlives our little 

 spans, and that any one could lay an axe to it is in- 

 conceivable. 



So I lingered through the book, greeting each picture 

 as I would greet the likeness of a boyhood friend, each 

 bringing back to me not only its own image, but what a 

 wealth else of associated memories ! Surely, every man 

 holds certain trees thus warmly in his affection trees 

 he planted, or his father or his grandfather planted, 

 trees which gave him shade and shelter, trees which 

 were an integral part of his home, trees which had some 

 grace of limb or charm of character which forever en- 

 deared them to him, through the subtle channels of 

 aesthetic satisfaction. "Trees have no personality?" I 

 said, as I closed the pamphlet. "Then there is no such 



