e it peculiar amongst the trees of the world. This
personal interest I take in every inmate of my garden, and this
interest I have increased by sedulous watching. But, really, trees and
plants resemble human beings in many ways. You shake a packet of seed
into your forcing-frame; and while some grow, others pine and die, or
struggle on under hereditary defect, showing indifferent blossoms late
in the season, and succumb at length. So far as one could discover,
the seeds were originally alike,--they received the same care, they
were fed by the same moisture and sunlight; but of no two of them are
the issues the same. Do I not see something of this kind in the world
of men, and can I not please myself with quaint analogies? These
plants and trees have their seasons of illness and their sudden deaths.
Your best rose-tree, whose fame has spread for twenty miles, is smitten
by some fell disease; its leaves take an unhealthy hue, and in a day or
so it is sapless,--dead. A tree of mine, the first last spring to put
out its leaves, and which wore them till November, made this spring no
green response to the call of the sunshine. Marvelling what ailed it,
I went to examine, and found it had been dead for months; and yet
during the winter there had been no frost to speak of, and more than
its brothers and sisters it was in no way exposed. These are the
tragedies of the garden, and they shadow forth other tragedies nearer
us. In everything we find a kind of dim mirror of ourselves. Sterne,
if placed in a desert, said he would love a tree; and I can fancy such
a love would not be altogether unsatisfying. Love of trees and plants
is safe. You do not run risk in your affections. They are my
children, silent and beautiful, untouched by any passion, unpolluted by
evil tempers; for me they leaf and flower themselves. In autumn they
put off their rich apparel, but next year they are back again, with
dresses fair as ever; and--one can extract a kind of fanciful
bitterness from the thought--should I be laid in my grave in winter,
they would all in spring be back again, with faces a bright and with
breaths as sweet, missing me not at all. Ungrateful, the one I am
fondest of would blossom very prettily if planted on the soil that
covers me,--where my dog would die, where my best friend would perhaps
raise an inscription!

I like flowering plants, but I like trees more,--for the reason, I
suppose, that they are slower in comin