e looks
at it, until it seems to fill the whole landscape. I have sat under it
in spring, when yet its leafy canopy was incomplete; I have looked into
its green depths in midsummer, when its grateful shadow refreshed the
highway; I have seen the sun set in redness beyond its bare limbs, the
snowy countryside emphasizing its noble lines; I have tried to fathom
the mystery in its sturdy heart overhead when the full moon rode in the
sky; and always that "great oak of Glastonbury" has soothed and cheered
and rested, and taken me nearer the Giver of all such good to restless
humanity.

Do I wonder at my friend who has built his home where he may look always
at this white oak, or that he raged in anger when a crabbed neighbor
ruthlessly cut down a superb tree of the same kind that was on his
property line, in order that he might run his barbed-wire fence
straight? No; I agree with him that this tree-murderer has probably a
barbed-wire heart, and we expect that his future existence will be
treeless, at least!

[Illustration: The swamp white oak in early spring]

Sometimes this same white oak adapts itself to the bank of a stream,
though its true character develops best in the drier ground. Its
strength has been its bane, for the value of its timber has caused many
a great isolated specimen to be cut down. It is fine to know that some
States--Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island also, I think--have
given to trees along highways, and in situations where they are part of
the highway landscape, the protection of a wise law. Under this law each
town appoints a tree-warden, serving without pay (and therefore with
love), who may seal to the town by his label such trees as are truly the
common possession, regardless of whose land they happen to be on. If the
owner desires to cut down a tree thus designated, he must first obtain
permission, after stating satisfactory reasons, of the annual
town-meeting, and this is not so easy as to make cutting very frequent.
The whole country should have such a law, and I should enjoy its
application right here in Pennsylvania, where oaks of a hundred years
have been cut down to make room for a whisky sign, and where a superb
pin-oak that I passed today is devoted to an ignominious use. If I may
venture to become hortatory, let me say that the responsibility for the
preservation of the all-too-few remaining great primeval trees, and of
their often notable progeny, in our Eastern States, re