other objects of natural affection. For example, a fair apology has been
offered by those ambitious persons who have fallen in love with the sea.
But, after all, that is a formless and disquieting passion. It lacks
solid comfort and mutual confidence. The sea is too big for loving, and
too uncertain. It will not fit into our thoughts. It has no personality
because it has so many. It is a salt abstraction. You might as well
think of loving a glittering generality like "the American woman." One
would be more to the purpose.

Mountains are more satisfying because they are more individual. It is
possible to feel a very strong attachment for a certain range whose
outline has grown familiar to our eyes, or a clear peak that has looked
down, day after day, upon our joys and sorrows, moderating our passions
with its calm aspect. We come back from our travels, and the sight of
such a well-known mountain is like meeting an old friend unchanged.
But it is a one-sided affection. The mountain is voiceless and
imperturbable; and its very loftiness and serenity sometimes make us the
more lonely.

Trees seem to come closer to our life. They are often rooted in our
richest feelings, and our sweetest memories, like birds, build nests
in their branches. I remember, the last time that I saw James Russell
Lowell, (only a few weeks before his musical voice was hushed,) he
walked out with me into the quiet garden at Elmwood to say good-bye.
There was a great horse-chestnut tree beside the house, towering above
the gable, and covered with blossoms from base to summit,--a pyramid of
green supporting a thousand smaller pyramids of white. The poet looked
up at it with his gray, pain-furrowed face, and laid his trembling hand
upon the trunk. "I planted the nut," said he, "from which this tree
grew. And my father was with me and showed me how to plant it."