rms and
shapes as it burns; it is a tree, growing very slowly--you can watch it
long and see no movement--very silently, unnoticed. It was planted in
the world many thousand years ago, a tiny, sickly plant. And men guarded
it and tended it, and gave up life and fame to aid its growth. In
the hot days of their youth, they came to the gate of the garden and
knocked, begging to be let in, and to be counted among the gardeners.
And their young companions without called to them to come back, and play
the man with bow and spear, and win sweet smiles from rosy lips, and
take their part amid the feast, and dance, not stoop with wrinkled
brows, at weaklings' work. And the passers by mocked them and called
shame, and others cried out to stone them. And still they stayed there
laboring, that the tree might grow a little, and they died and were
forgotten.

And the tree grew fair and strong. The storms of ignorance passed over
it, and harmed it not. The fierce fires of superstition soared around
it; but men leaped into the flames and beat them back, perishing, and
the tree grew. With the sweat of their brow have men nourished its green
leaves. Their tears have moistened the earth about it. With their blood
they have watered its roots.

The seasons have come and passed, and the tree has grown and flourished.
And its branches have spread far and high, and ever fresh shoots are
bursting forth, and ever new leaves unfolding to the light. But they
are all part of the one tree--the tree that was planted on the first
birthday of the human race. The stem that bears them springs from the
gnarled old trunk that was green and soft when white-haired Time was a
little child; the sap that feeds them is drawn up through the roots that
twine and twist about the bones of the ages that are dead.

The human mind can no more produce an original thought than a tree can
bear an original fruit. As well might one cry for an original note in
music as expect an original idea from a human brain.

One wishes our friends, the critics, would grasp this simple truth, and
leave off clamoring for the impossible, and being shocked because they
do not get it. When a new book is written, the high-class critic opens
it with feelings of faint hope, tempered by strong conviction of coming
disappointment. As he pores over the pages, his brow darkens with
virtuous indignation, and his lip curls with the Godlike contempt that
the exceptionally great critic ever feels fo