Memories 



lated it was ; wide as the span of a man's arms, 

 and rising near a hundred feet without knot or 

 branch, a glorious upspringing shaft, immensely 

 strong, yet delicate in its poise as a lance in rest. 

 From the top of the shaft rugged arms were 

 stretched out above the tallest trees, and on these 

 rested lightly as a cloud its crown of green. Like 

 others that overtop their fellows, the old pine had 

 paid the penalty of greatness. Whirlwinds that 

 left lower trees untouched had stripped it of half 

 its branches; lightning had leaped upon it from 

 the clouds, leaving a spiral scar from crown to 

 foot; but the wound which threatened its death 

 was meanwhile its life, because the lumbermen, 

 seeing the lightning's mark, had passed on and 

 left the pine in its solitary grandeur. 



When I first saw that tree I changed the trail so 

 as to pass beneath it; and thereafter it was like a 

 living presence, benign and friendly, beside the 

 way. To lay a hand on its mighty stem, as one 

 passed eastward in the early morning, was to 

 receive an impression of renewed power, a power 

 which the scornful might attribute to imagination, 

 the chemist to electrons or radio-activity, and the 

 simple man to his Mother Nature. At evening, 

 as one followed the dim trail homeward in the 

 fading light, one had only to look up for a guiding 

 sign; and there, solemn and still against the twi- 



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