tumbling in artificial cascades between banks thick with mossy ferns,
and bright with blossoms. The children led their companion beneath fig
and bay trees through an Italian garden; all of this splendid luxury
of verdure had sprung from the desert as the result of a fortune
patiently spent in irrigation.

MRS. FREMONT OLDER,
in _The Giants._



JULY 19.


Some men have an eye for trees and an inborn sympathy with these
rooted giants, as if the same sap ran in their own veins. To them
trees have a personality quite as animals have, and, to be sure, there
are "characters" among trees. I knew a solitary yellow pine which
towered in the landscape, the last of its race. Its vast columnal
trunk seemed to loom and expand as one approached. Always there was
distant music in the boughs above, a noble strain descending from the
clouds. Its song was more majestic than that of any other tree, and
fell upon the listening ear with the far-off cadence of the surf, but
sweeter and more lyrical, as if it might proceed from some celestial
harp. Though there was not a breeze stirring below, this vast tree
hummed its mighty song. Apparently its branches had penetrated to
another world than this, some sphere of increasing melody.

C.H. KIRKHAM,
in _In the Open._