jfrom that deep-lying warmth below all frost lines. 

 No parasite this, no surface weed, but the sturdy- 

 child of Earth herself, suckled by a Spartan mother. 

 Look upon an ancient beech, bared thus to the 

 storm, and the chest involuntarily expands, as 

 though we too should take firmer hold somewhere 

 and stand more ere<5t. The shellbark is as shaggy, 

 raw-boned and loose-jointed as the beech is trim 

 and closely knit. Its bare branches are not clean- 

 cut against the sky but swollen and distorted like 

 knotted hands of toil — horny, crooked fingers up- 

 raised to the heavens. What rude strength is their 

 portion who stand thus alone and derive from the 

 earth as befits the stalwart — buffeting, solitary 

 and unyielding, the winter gales. 



As the trees are leafless, the bark is now more 

 in evidence, Moosewood looks slender and striped 

 as a ribbon-snake, and limbs of the hop-hornbeam 

 have the appearance of sinews. Where a black 

 and a white oak stand near together, the dif- 

 ference in color is as evident as between a negro 

 and a white man. The white birch is to the 

 winter woods what the dogwood is. in spring, the 

 maple in autumn. How is it the ancients did not 

 metamorphose the fairest of all nymphs into this 



^57 



