How am I sure the tree is alive and friendly? Doesn't it bow to you
when you pass, and curve and sweep before you? Doesn't it offer you
rest and refreshment in its shade? Doesn't it entertain you by showing
you beautiful pictures and forms, and doesn't it furnish you with music?
See what an instructor it is! Away up there among the branches are
lessons involving the very first principles of architecture, sculpture,
and painting,--signs that show the laws of harmony and hint at morality
itself. Its trunk and limbs look honest and courageous, firm and trusty,
while all its lofty, tapering height points Godward.
It is your confidant; and the more you tell it, the more you will find
to say. While it is very modest and retiring, requiring time to get
acquainted with you, still, the more it talks to you, the more you
will want to hear. The pine is your school-master, and you are the
royal pupil,--Roger Ascham and Queen Elizabeth. It is no longer an
ordinary tree, but something born with a spirit in it; and it has
birthdays. Thoreau, the man who loved Nature so much that the birds
and the fishes took care of him and were never afraid of their master,
used to visit certain trees on certain days in the year. The pine has
a birthday worth celebrating in December, the maple in October, and
the birch in May. You think this is all fancy, and believe persons
must be very imaginative to find such friends in Nature? Oh, no; along
with fancy Nature tucks very real things into our thoughts about her.
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