WINTER TREES 
‘ .EAFLESS trees are, in ordinary thinking, a synonym 
} of desolation. They are nude, forlorn, forsaken, 
' and are shivering through the winter as a beggar 
who thinks winter the necessary tribulation that 
preludes spring. | have not so learned the trees. 
Sympathy extended to them is, as | confidently 
believe, misapplied. Winter trees are not mendi- 
cants. The last thing they do is to ask alms. In 
them, as | have become acquainted with them, is 
a sturdy independence worthy of a Puritan colonist. 
# These words of Marianne Farningham.are part true, 
not wholly, though more nearly than the average 
estimate : 
“ Poverty-stricken and gaunt they stand, 
Dotted about o'er the hard brown land; 
Stripped of their beauty they moan and sigh 
To the pitiless breeze as it rushes by; 
Leafless, forsaken, of song bereft, 
They are like a life with no pleasure left : 
Beautiful even though stripped and bare, 
Are the trees that are planted everywhere; 
Winter's best beauty belongs to them, 
To their giant trunks and feathery stem, 
And they bravely stand in the silent wood, 
Like a patient life that is nobly good;”’ 
though I feel certain the trees will love her scarcely more because she 
wrote of them, unless they are touched, as all good lives should be, by 
thought given by the true hearts of women. Winter trees stand and 
endure—but they battle and enjoy and are beautiful as well. If I were 
41 
