THE TREE FOLK 23 



William Booth about three hundred and twenty-five; 

 Jotham Wade is two hundred and fifty. He was the 

 next owner of the land. From him it passed to Celia 

 Peaks, a cantankerous little old maid (married at last 

 to a Deacon, when past middle life), who hobbled about 

 bowed over a cane. The next oldest Cedar, a squat one, 

 whose leader was ripped off by some accident a century 

 ago, bears her name. Aunt Lydia had the land next. 

 You would admire the tree named after her. It is a 

 cedar in its early prime, tall, symmetrical, and as hand- 

 some as she was at seventy. That cedar is about one 

 hundred and twenty-five years old now, and is just be- 

 ginning to take on the plumpness of the matron in mid- 

 dle life. **Aunt Lydia'' has passed the age and shape of 

 "The Spire'' (Plate X). Cedars hold that school-girl 

 figure for about seventy-five years. Having attained ap- 

 proximately full height at fifty, they grow stouter and 

 broader and more picturesque as the centuries deal with 

 them. 



I would like to introduce to you some of the other 

 members of our woodland aristocracy. It is worth while 

 to have a nodding acquaintance, at least, with the first 

 families. 



Plate XI shows you *' Methuselah." He is one of the 

 White Pines. Two centuries old, he fills a crystal sphere 

 some eighty feet in diameter. You can lie flat upon his 

 thick top as on a curled hair mattress. Henry Howe has 

 done it. 



