156 



AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD. 



Many a pedestrian, also, in a stroll through it, has 

 cut for himself a handsome staff or a cane. The hick- 

 ories have always been with us the favorites for this 

 purpose, for their strength and the nice, straight char- 

 acter of the saplings, and because 

 of the undeviating adherence of the 

 household to the tenets of Andrew 

 Jackson — "Old Hickory" himself. 

 Some of the trees, too, have died, 

 but are yet standing, and still others 

 have leafless, dying- branches at 

 their tops (killed perhaps by the 

 bullets), and these spikes and 

 spreading staghorns of dead limbs 

 jutting up above the green crowns 

 are an unfailing sign of the begin- 

 ning of the death of the trees. First 

 the tops decay, and then the larger 

 branches and limbs, and finally the 

 trunk; and it is not so many years 

 after these stagheads first appear 

 when you will find the tree dead and 

 vines twining in a living wreath 

 about it. I felt the saddest when I 

 found that there were staghorns on 

 "the old home tree." It was a fine 

 large hickory in the very center of 

 the woods, which seemed to be a 

 never-failing rendezvous for squir- 

 rels; for, whenever squirrels were 

 not to be seen or heard anywhere 

 else in the whole woods, if we would 



THE OLD HOME TREE. 



