stronger twigs, and one day he dug up this little tree and carried it away to an open field.

There its roots were again put into the soft, warm ground, and it held its pretty head up as if looking into the blue sky. Just at sunset the farmer's wife came out to new tree.

look at the

"I wonder if I shall ever see apples growing on these twigs," she said.

The little tree heard it, and said softly: "We shall see! Come, gentle rain and warm sun, and let me be the first to give a fine, red apple to the farmer's wife."

And the rain and the sun did come, and the branches grew, and the roots dug deep into the soft ground, and at last, one bright spring day, the farmer's wife cried:

"Just see! One of our little trees has some blossoms on it! I believe that, small as it is, it will give me an apple this autumn."

But the farmer laughed and said: "Oh, it is not old enough to bear apples yet."

The little tree said nothing, but all to itself it thought: "The good woman shall have an apple this very year."

And she did. When the cool days of autumn came, and the leaves began to fade and grow yellow, two red apples hung upon one of the branches of the tree.

THE AGE OF TREES

ANONYMOUS

MAN counts his life by years; the oak, by centuries. At one hundred years of age the tree is but a sapling; at five hundred it is mature and strong; at six hundred the giant king of the greenwood begins to feel the touch of time; but the decline is as slow as the growth was, and the sturdy old tree rears its proud head and reckons centuries of old age just as it reckoned centuries of youth.

It has been said that the patriarchs of the forest laugh at history. Is it not true? Perhaps, when the balmy zephyrs stir the trees, the leaves whisper strange stories to one another. The oaks and the pines, and their brethren of the wood, have seen so many suns rise and set, so many seasons come and go, and so many generations pass into silence, that we may well wonder what "the story of the trees" would be to us if they had tongues to tell it, or we ears fine enough to understand.

THE PINE TREE

BY JOHN RUSKIN

From Modern Painters

THE tremendous unity of the pine absorbs and moulds the life of a race. The pine shadows rest

upon a nation. The northern peoples, century after century, lived under one or other of the two great powers of the pine and the sea, both infinite. They dwelt amidst the forests as they wandered on the waves, and saw no end nor any other horizon. Still the dark, green trees, or the dark, green waters, jagged the dawn with their fringe or their foam. And whatever elements of imagination, or of warrior strength, or of domestic justice, were brought down by the Norwegian or the Goth against the dissoluteness or degradation of the south of Europe, were taught them under the green roofs and wild penetralia of the pine.

THE TREE*

BY JONES VERY

I LOVE thee when thy swelling buds appear
And one by one their tender leaves unfold,
As if they knew that warmer suns were near,
Nor longer sought to hide from winter's cold:
And when with darker growth thy leaves are seen,
To veil from view the early robin's nest,
I love to lie beneath thy waving screen

With limbs by summer's heat and toil oppressed; And when the autumn winds have stripped thee bare, And round thee lies the smooth, untrodden snow, *By permission of the Century Company, New York.

When naught is thine that made thee once so fair,

I love to watch thy shadowy form below,

And through thy leafless arms to look above

On stars that brighter beam, when most we need their love.

THE GLORY OF THE WOODS*

BY SUSAN FENIMORE COOPER

OF THE infinite variety of fruits which spring from the bosom of the earth, the trees of the wood are greatest in dignity. Of all the works of the creation which know the changes of life and death, the trees of the forest have the longest existence. Of all the objects which crown the gray earth, the woods preserve unchanged, throughout the greatest reach of time, their native character. The works of man are ever varying their aspect; his towns and his fields alike reflect the unstable opinions, the fickle wills and fancies of each passing generation; but the forests on his borders remain to-day the same as they were ages of years since. Old as the everlasting hills, during thousands of seasons they have put forth and laid down their verdure in calm obedience to the decree which first bade them cover the ruins of the Deluge.

* By permission of the Baker and Taylor Company, New York.

THE AMERICAN FORESTS*

BY JOHN MUIR

THE forests of America, however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to God; for they were the best He had ever planted. The whole continent was a garden, and from the beginning it seemed to be favored above all the other wild parks and gardens of the globe. To prepare the ground, it was rolled and sifted in seas with infinite loving deliberation and forethought, lifted into the light, submerged and warmed over and over again, pressed and crumpled into folds and ridges, mountains and hills, subsoiled with heaving volcanic fires, plowed and ground and sculptured into scenery and soil with glaciers and rivers every feature growing and changing from beauty to beauty, higher and higher. And in the fulness of time it was planted in groves, and belts, and broad, exuberant, mantling forests, with the largest, most varied, most fruitful, and most beautiful trees in the world. Bright seas made its border with wave embroidery and icebergs; gray deserts were outspread in the middle of it, mossy tundras on the north, savannas on the south, and blooming prairies and plains; while lakes and rivers shone through all the vast forests and openings, and happy birds and beasts

* By permission of the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.