How Animals Talk 



twisting, snakelike procession around the next 

 bend. These were wild animals, remember; and 

 ounce for ounce there is no more " savage " beast 

 in the woods than Cheokhes the mink. 



As with birds or beasts, so also with the trees 

 about my pond: somehow they seemed different 

 from all other trees, perhaps because of more 

 intimate association; for though all the cedars 

 or hemlocks of a forest look alike to a stranger, 

 no sooner do you spend days alone among them 

 than you begin to have a curious feeling of in- 

 dividuality, of comradeship, of understanding even, 

 as if they were not wholly dumb or insensate. It 

 was inevitable, therefore, as I came down the trail, 

 recalling this or that tree under which I had often 

 passed or rested, that certain of them stood forth 

 in memory as having given me pleasure or greeting 

 in the lonely woods, just as certain faces emerge 

 from the sea of faces in a crowd or a great audience 

 of strangers, and instantly make one feel his kin- 

 ship to humanity. 



Foremost among these memorable trees was a 

 great white-pine, to me the noblest of all forest 

 growths, which stood on a knoll to westward of 

 my pond, on the way to camp, and which always 

 seemed to cry hail or farewell as I came or went. 

 It had a stem to make one wonder, almost to make 

 one reverent. Massive, soft-colored, finely reticu- 



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