THE WOODS. 169 



ye loves" [i. e., the let- 

 ters will increase with 

 the size of the tree, as 

 his feelings].) It has 

 long been a means of 

 letter-writing with 

 savages. In his " His- 

 tory of Virginia, in 

 Four Parts," pub- 

 lished (second edi- 

 tion) in 1722, Thomas 

 Beverley remarks, too, 

 that it was learned by 

 the next settlers " by 

 Letters on the Trees," 

 s|cra"tched there by 

 earlier arrivals, that 

 the latter had removed 

 to Croatan, an island, 

 Orlando you remem- 

 ber, in "As You Like 



It," was so persistent in carving sweet Rosalind's 

 name upon the trees and hanging verses from their 

 boughs ("There is a man haunts the forest," said 

 she to him) that Jaques was moved to remonstrate : 

 "I pray you, mar no more trees with writing love- 

 songs in their barks." Sir Roger de Coverley, too, 

 confessed that he "had been fool enough" to carve 

 "the perverse widow's" name on several of his trees; 

 "so unhappy is the condition of men in love, to attempt 

 the removing of their passion by the methods which 

 serve only to imprint it deeper." And here are some 



THE EYELASHES OF THE FOREST. 



