48 mature Studies in Berkshire. 



sunshine and the light. Here is one just in front of 

 me-, on the edge of the grove facing the morning sun. 

 It is fully seventy feet high. For two-thirds of its 

 height it has not a single limb on the inner or shaded 

 side of its trunk. Until it begins to get the light from 

 the west, above the tops of its companions, it stretches 

 its long branches, like so many outreaching, uplifted, 

 and imploring hands, toward the quarter whence the 

 most light comes. Here are other trees, whose first 

 forty feet are marked by dead and dying branches, 

 dropping into decay because they are starving for 

 light. But this tree will not starve. It pushes its 

 long trunk upward. It reaches after the upper light ; 

 and if it can reach the sunbeams at the top it minds 

 nothing about the shadows below. As long as it 

 keeps in upper sunshine, the bare trunk in the sombre 

 light of the grove, the very roots deep in the dark of 

 the earth beneath, feel the thrill and currents born in 

 those life-giving rays. It does not seem as if any en- 

 largement upon that fact could be more forceful than 

 the mere statement thereof. Long, long ago the an- 

 cestral pines began to grow as one day the human 

 soul was to find and keep its life. Happy the man 

 who still holds fast to the ancient and unchanging 

 law. 



