24 THE TREE FOLK 



The Frontispiece gives you a glimpse of the body of 

 *' Queen Victoria," an old Beech in the Grandma Clapp 

 Woods. They used to say in England that Victoria 

 could sit perfectly still longer than any other living 

 person. Her namesake outsits her! There she has been 

 for two hundred years, and there she is likely to remain 

 for two hundred more. It is startling to come upon her 

 white body, gleaming against the dark background of 

 the gloomy swamp woods. And then, she is so fat! 

 One almost feels guilty even to look at her. 



You would enjoy old ''King Priam," a veteran Red 

 Cedar in the Seaverns' Pasture. He was so named be- 

 cause of his sons, who stand about him to protect him 

 from his Greek enemies. The Trojan King had seventy 

 sons, they say; this old potentate has eighty-three by 

 actual count. They stand around him in a solid ring — 

 the oldest as tall now as the old man himself. There is 

 a secret pathway you could follow, if you knew the 

 password, that would take you through the magic circle 

 into the King's hall. You would find it circular, roofed 

 with a pierced fretwork of jasper and verd-antique, 

 and floored with malachite. In the centre, by the side 

 of the King, in the springtime, stands a great living 

 bouquet of eglantine, and in the fall, one of barberry, 

 dripping with jewels of sard. 



You should see ''Homer," — the blind singer, — a 

 Pine on the Falls Ledges; beneath whose shadows I lay 



