THE WOODS. 17 



man who goes through the woods and sees 

 nothing in them but lumber, ship-timber, and 

 cordwood has missed a princely birthright. But 

 people find a charm in the woods who are not 

 moved by beauty. Even city born and bred 

 men and women discover an indefinable some- 

 thing in the unspoiled forests that is restful and 

 healing to body and mind ; they come there to 

 a patrimony all their, own ; there old instincts 

 are satisfied. 



Says the poet, " The groves were man's first 

 temples." They were also his first homes ; there 

 he made his first rude roofs, and there under 

 the lowly thatch the family life began, that will 

 not be complete till a recognition of human 

 brotherhood silences the last cannon and sheaths 

 the last sword. So deep-rooted and mysterious 

 has been the love of this old home that men of 

 antiquity everywhere worshipped trees, and it 

 still continues in India and other Oriental lands. 

 The sacred Bo-tree of Anuradhopura, in Ceylon, 

 is visited by many thousand pilgrims every year, 

 and happy is he who bears away a leaf that has 

 dropped within his reach. During two thou- 

 sand one hundred and thirty years Buddhists 

 have held this to be a sacred tree, grown from a 

 scion or shoot of a tree under which the " Blessed 

 One," the founder of Buddhism, contemplated 



