THE TREE FOLK 



YOU never saw a tree. You have seen some particular 

 kind of tree. No^ you have not seen that, even; all 

 you have seen is some individual tree — the tall nut 

 tree, let us say, that grew in the pasture, when you 

 were a boy, near the edge of the swamp where the frogs 

 peeped in April. 



That tall nut tree was a miraculous tree. * All trees 

 are miraculous. We know practically nothing about the 

 essential element in them, the life in them, the souls of 

 them that make them what they are. 



Within fifty feet of where I sit at my desk, stand two 

 trees that were born the same year. I can hear the 

 crooning of one of them and the chattering of the other 

 as the morning breeze walks past them on its way to the 

 sea. One tree is a soft pine; the other is a seedling apple. 

 Who planted the seeds for me I do not know, but I sus- 

 pect that Old Westwind, the busiest parcels-post man we 

 have in these parts, planted one of them, and a friend 

 of his by the name of Gray Squirrel planted the other. 



For thirty-nine years the somethings lodged originally 

 between or within the particles of matter in those two 

 seeds have been at work building those two trees 

 (Plate I). The something in the pine seed, let us say, the 



