e not only
suffice to hold it upright against the storm, but they last long
after the trunk has been cut away. Our forefathers in clear land
used to set the uprooted stumps of the pine up in rows for
fencing, unsightly barricades that would persist for a century
with little sign of decay. On the other hand, wood from the trunk
set in the ground soon decays.

Of the great trees centuries old that once clothed our land from
Newfoundland to the Dakotas, from northern New Brunswick to
southern Pennsylvania, few if any remain. Nor shall anyone see
their like here again for centuries. But the pines are coming back
again to New England. We know their values now as never before and
we are encouraging them to reclothe our solitudes both for their
commercial and their sentimental value. This last is great and
grows greater, nor need one necessarily go into the storm at
midnight to appreciate it. One may get some phases of it there,
though, that are not to be found elsewhere. My way home through
the storm was rough and wet, but it was not lonely. The songs of
the pines went with me, especially the tinkling xylophone dance
music of the dryad, deep within the ancient trunk.

CHAPTER VI

NANTUCKET IN APRIL

It is fabled that nine hundred years ago the Norsemen riding the
white horses of the shoals, dismounted upon Nantucket, its
original European discoverers. But this is hardly to be believed,
for they did not stay there. Conditions the world over have
changed much since the day of the Vikings, but still today he who
comes to Nantucket must emulate them, and ride the same white
horses of the shoals, for they surround the island and prance for
the modern steamer as they did for the long Norse ships with the
weird figure-heads and the bulwarks of shields. Blown down from
New Bedford by a rough nor'wester we plunged through the green
rollers south of Hedge Fence shoals, wallowed among the white
surges of Cross Rip, and found level water only between the black
jetties of Nantucket harbor, where in the roar of bursting waves
the white spindrift fluffed and drifted across like dry snow on a
January day.

Within lies the old town, more sedately and unconsciously its very
self in April than at any other time of year. The scalloping is
done, prohibited by law after the first and the dredges no longer
vex the sandy shallows of the land-locked harbor behind gray
Coatue. The summer visitor has not yet come and the town is its
v