our own
receptivity. If we are brave enough, or sweet enough within, we will not
require the touch of the senses, nor Nature's masterstrokes to awaken
us. We will not need to leave our rooms, for it is all here--in the deep
gleam of polished strength of the hickory axe-handle, in the low light
of the blade, in stone wall and oaken sill, in leather and brass and
pottery, in the respiration of the burning wood, and veritably massed
upon the sweeping distance from the window. It is because we are coarse
and fibrous and confined in the sick weight of flesh that we do not
stand in a kind of creative awe before the lowliest mystery of our
physical sight.

Do you know that there is a different fragrance, a different manner of
burning to each tree, whose parts you bring to the open camp fire or
your own hearth; that some woods shriek at this second death after the
cutting, that others pass with gracious calm, and still others give up
their dearest reality, at the moment of breaking under the fire, like
the released spirit of a saint that was articulate heretofore only in
beautiful deeds?

The willow burns with quiet meagre warmth, like a lamb led to slaughter,
but with innocence feigned, keeping her vain secrets to the last. The
oak resists, as he resists the axe, having spent all his energy in
building a stout and perfect body, proud of his twisted arms and gnarled
hands. The pine rebels, and noisily to the swift end, saying: "I do not
believe in cremation. I believe in breaking down alone and apart, as I
lived. I am clean without the fire. You should let me alone, and now I
shall not let you think nor talk of real things until I am gone...."
Each with its fragrance--the elm, the silentest and sweetest of all. The
elm has forgotten her body in spreading her grace to the stars; the elm
for aspiration, loving the starlight so well that she will not hide it
from the ground; most beautiful of all, save the beech in winter, a
swift and saintly passing of a noble life. The maple warms you in spite
of herself, giving up her secrets which are not all clean--a lover of
fatness, her shade too dense, a hater of winter, because she is bare,
and the secret of all ugliness in her nudity. (The true tree-lover is
never a stranger to the winter woods.)

And the mothering beech, with her soft incense, her heart filling the
room with warmth and light, her will to warm the world; the mothering
beech, a healer and a shelterer, a lover like tha