they seem to have been well-nigh universal. The wonder is that any
should be without them. For myself, I cannot recollect the day when I
did not regard the Weymouth pine (the white pine I was taught to call
it, but now, for reasons of my own, I prefer the English name) with
something like reverence. Especially was this true of one,--a tree of
stupendous girth and height, under which I played, and up which I
climbed till my cap seemed almost to rub against the sky. That pine
ought to be standing yet; I would go far to lie in its shadow. But alas!
no village Xerxes concerned himself for its safety, and long, long ago
it was brought to earth, it and all its fair lesser companions. There is
no wisdom in the grave, and it is nothing to them now that I remember
them so kindly. Some of them went to the making of boxes, I suppose,
some to the kindling of kitchen fires. In like noble spirit did the
illustrious Bobo, for the love of roast pig, burn down his father's
house.

No such pines are to be seen now. I have said it for these twenty years,
and mean no offense, surely, to the one under which, in thankful mood, I
happen at this moment to be reclining. Yet a murmur runs through its
branches as I pencil the words. Perhaps it is saying to itself that
giants are, and always have been, things of the past,--things gazed at
over the beholder's shoulder and through the mists of years; and that
this venerable monarch of my boyhood, this relic of times remote, has
probably grown faster since it was cut down than ever it did while
standing. I care not to argue the point. Rather, let me be glad that a
tree is a tree, whether large or small. What a wonder of wonders it
would seem to unaccustomed eyes! As some lover of imaginative delights
wished that he could forget Shakespeare and read him new, so I would
cheerfully lose all memory of my king of Weymouth pines, if by that
means I might for once look upon a tree as upon something I had never
seen or dreamed of.

For that purpose, were it given me to choose, I would have one that had
grown by itself; full of branches on all sides, but with no suggestion
of primness; in short, a perfect tree, a miracle hardly to be found in
any forest, since the forest would be no better than a park if the
separate members of it were allowed room to develop each after its own
law. Nature is too cunning an artist to spoil the total effect of her
picture by too fond a regard for the beauty of particular deta