and as an individual.

There is a mother-idea in each particular kind of tree, which, if well
marked, is probably embodied in the poetry of every language. Take the
oak, for instance, and we find it always standing as a type of
strength and endurance. I wonder if you ever thought of the single
mark of supremacy which distinguishes this tree from all our other
forest-trees? All the rest of them shirk the work of resisting
gravity; the oak alone defies it. It chooses the horizontal direction
for its limbs, so that their whole weight may tell,--and then
stretches them out fifty or sixty feet, so that the strain may be
mighty enough to be worth resisting. You will find, that, in passing
from the extreme downward droop of the branches of the weeping-willow
to the extreme upward inclination of those of the poplar, they sweep
nearly half a circle. At 90 deg. the oak stops short; to slant upward
another degree would mark infirmity of purpose; to bend downwards,
weakness of organization. The American elm betrays something of both;
yet sometimes, as we shall see, puts on a certain resemblance to its
sturdier neighbor.

It won't do to be exclusive in our taste about trees. There is hardly
one of them which has not peculiar beauties in some fitting place for
it. I remember a tall poplar of monumental proportions and aspect, a
vast pillar of glossy green, placed on the summit of a lofty hill, and
a beacon to all the country round. A native of that region saw fit to
build his house very near it, and, having a fancy that it might blow
down some time or other, and exterminate himself and any incidental
relatives who might be "stopping" or "tarrying" with him,--also
laboring under the delusion that human life is under all circumstances
to be preferred to vegetable existence,--had the great poplar cut
down. It is so easy to say, "It is only a poplar!" and so much harder
to replace its living cone than to build a granite obelisk!

I must tell you about some of my tree-wives. I was at one period of my
life much devoted to the young lady-population of Rhode Island, a
small, but delightful State in the neighborhood of Pawtucket. The
number of inhabitants being not very large, I had leisure, during my
visits to the Providence Plantations, to inspect the face of the
country in the intervals of more fascinating studies of physiognomy. I
heard some talk of a great elm a short distance from the locality just
mentioned. "Let us see the great e