r people come to, even as I come to these trees, and say,
"Good morning, my friend! I have been lonely for you."

The pines are our fellow-creatures and more closely related to us than
anything that has roots in the earth. They speak to our inmost being.
A group of pines will restore sanity to the disdistracted and sorrowful
mind, for they are cordial trees, and in quietness and confidence is
their strength. The pines are never tremulous or trivial, neither do
they fade or die. Other trees are green for awhile, but these all the
while.

... Pippa, the little maid who sang for the world's hurt, came out of
the woods, as likewise the Nazarene who died for it.

Upland growths are the pines as befitteth the gods of the arboreal
world. They are northern trees, "the chief things of the ancient
mountains, the precious things of the lasting hills." Their history is
writ far back in the black strata of the carboniferous age, and that
they will be the last trees to disappear off the earth, who can
gainsay? As for me I shall not be persuaded otherwise though a man
rise from the dead to tell me.

And now we have come to Jasper, where we have two hours to rest off and
talk to the men of a construction camp who have struck work for the day
in order to see the train come in. Of course, it does not take all
their day for this, but there were the preliminary toilet preparations
to make and the walk in and out. Such newly shaven chins; such freshly
brushed clothes; such irreproachable boots! Who could have expected it!

Like the ascetics who of old-time went into the wilderness and found
themselves dreaming of scarlet lips and white arms, so these fine
fellows are ever fancying a comely woman gliding across their trail; a
distressed damsel who needs to be fed and carried for long, long
distances and sheltered in a low-built house of logs that is
well-warmed and well-provisioned, with no other bachelor nearer than a
hundred miles.

The bachelors will doubtless deny this sweet dalliance with a vehement
fervour, but it has the matter of fact virtue of being true, and is no
whimsey of mine. A year ago it was, in a prize competition, I was
called upon to read over a hundred short stories, or more properly
speaking, human nature studies. An amazingly large proportion of these
came from northern camps, and in nearly every case the afore-mentioned
situation was the theme. The variation from this concerned a young
Englishman o