22 THE TREE FOLK 



CHARACTER is so precious, so personal, so indi- 

 vidual, that each human being has a name all his 

 own. 



You do not like to deal anonymously with people. 

 You like to have intimate names of your own invention 

 for your best friends, names known only to the elect. 



When you come to have intimate friends among the 

 trees you will feel the same toward them. You will have 

 names for them, as I have for the chief Cedars upon 

 my country place. 



The Hill on which my house stands was owned first 

 by Timothy Hatherly, Merchant Adventurer, from Lon- 

 don. It was granted to him and his ''Conihasset Part- 

 ners" by the King of England, before 1626. That old 

 Cedar I mentioned, to which I feel like lifting my hat, 

 I call Timothy Hatherly. From all I can learn about 

 that redoubtable old Pilgrim, he should feel honored to 

 have his name so perpetuated. The next owner of my 

 Hill was William Booth, 1650 or thereabouts; conse- 

 quently the next oldest Cedar, the one beyond the wall 

 westward from the back door of my studio, the one in 

 which my Ruby-crowned Kinglet stops to sing to me 

 the first morning in May every year on his way from 

 Yucatan to Labrador, is named William Booth. A few 

 rods eastward, on the edge of one of the terraces of the 

 drumhn, stands Jotham Wade, the next in order in age. 

 Timothy Hatherly is about four hundred years old, 



