barks of our old New England elms
and other big trees.--Don't you want to hear me talk trees a little
now? That is one of my specialties.

[So they all agreed that they should like to hear me talk about
trees.]

I want you to understand, in the first place, that I have a most
intense, passionate fondness for trees in general, and have had
several romantic attachments to certain trees in particular. Now, if
you expect me to hold forth in a "scientific" way about my
tree-loves,--to talk, for instance, of the Ulmus Americana, and
describe the ciliated edges of its samara, and all that,--you are an
anserine individual, and I must refer you to a dull friend who will
discourse to you of such matters. What should you think of a lover who
should describe the idol of his heart in the language of science,
thus: Class, Mammalia; Order, Primates; Genus, Homo; Species,
Europeus; Variety, Brown; Individual, Ann Eliza; Dental Formula

2-2 1-1 2-2 3-3
i--- c--- p--- m----,
2-2 1-1 2-2 3-3

and so on?

No, my friends, I shall speak of trees as we see them, love them,
adore them in the fields, where they are alive, holding their green
sun-shades over our heads, talking to us with their hundred thousand
whispering tongues, looking down on us with that sweet meekness which
belongs to huge, but limited organisms,--which one sees in the brown
eyes of oxen, but most in the patient posture, the outstretched arms,
and the heavy-drooping robes of these vast beings endowed with life,
but not with soul,--which outgrow us and outlive us, but stand
helpless,--poor things!--while Nature dresses and undresses them, like
so many full-sized, but underwitted children.

Did you ever read old Daddy Gilpin? Slowest of men, even of English
men; yet delicious in his slowness, as is the light of a sleepy eye in
woman. I always supposed "Dr. Syntax" was written to make fun of
him. I have a whole set of his works, and am very proud of it, with
its gray paper, and open type, and long ff, and orange-juice
landscapes. The _Pere_ Gilpin had the kind of science I like in
the study of Nature,--a little less observation than White of
Selborne, but a little more poetry.--Just think of applying the
Linnaean system to an elm! Who cares how many stamens or pistils that
little brown flower, which comes out before the leaf, may have to
classify it by? What we want is the meaning, the character, the
expression of a tree, as a kind