peculiar sounding of the heart-strokes, when the lofty, well-poised
structure is balancing itself, and quivering through every fibre and
leaf and twig on the few unsevered tendons that have not yet felt
the keen edge of the woodman's steel. See the first leaning it
cannot recover. Hear the first cracking of the central vertebra;
then the mournful, moaning whir in the air; then the tremendous
crash upon the green earth; the vibration of the mighty trunk on the
ground, like the writhing and tremor of an ox struck by the
butcher's axe; the rebound into the air of dismembered branches; the
frightened flight of leaves and dust, and all the other distractions
of that hour of death and destruction. Look upon that ruin! The
wealth, genius and labor that could build a hundred Windsor Castles,
and rebuild all the cathedrals of England in a decade, could not
rebuild in two centuries that elm to the life and stature you
levelled to the dust in two hours.

Put, then, the man who plants trees for posterity with him who,
"passing through the valley of Baca, maketh it a well." Put him
under the same blessing of his kind, for he deserves it. He gives
them the richest earthly gift that a man can give to a coming
generation. In a practical sense, he gives them _time_. He gives
them a whole century, as an extra. If they would pay a gold
sovereign for every solid inch of oak, they could not hire one built
to the stature of one of these trees in less than two centuries'
time, though they dug about it and nursed it as the man did the vine
in Scripture. Blessed be the builders of these living temples of
Nature! Blessed be the man, rich or poor, old or young, especially
the old, who sets his heart and hand to this cheap but sublime and
priceless architecture.