him pleasure. Once he denied his mind books, and now books refuse to
give him comfort. Once he denied himself friendship, and now men
refuse him their love. Having received nothing from him, the great
world has no investment to return to him. Such a life, entering the
harbor of old age, is like unto a bestormed ship with empty coal bins,
whose crew fed the furnace, first with the cargo and then with the
furniture, and reached the harbor, having made the ship a burned-cut
shell. God buries the souls of many men long years before their bodies
are carried to the graveyard.

This principle tells us why nature and society are so prodigal with
treasures to some men and so niggardly to others. What a different
thing a forest is to different men! He who gives the ax receives a
mast. He who gives taste receives a picture. He who gives imagination
receives a poem. He who gives faith hears the "goings of God in the
tree-tops." The charcoal-burner fronts an oak for finding out how many
cords of wood are in it, as the Goths of old fronted peerless temples
for estimating how many huts they could quarry from the stately
pile.[1] But an artist curses the woodsman for making the tree food
for ax and saw. It has become to him as sacred as the cathedral within
which he bares his head. It is a temple where birds praise God. It is
a harp with endless music for the summer winds. It fills his eye with
beauty and his ear with rustling melodies.

For the poet that selfsame oak is enshrined in a thousand noble
associations. It sings for him like a hymn; it shines like a vision;
it suggests ships, storms and ocean battles; the spear of Launcelot,
the forests of Arden; old baronial halls mellow with lights falling on
oaken floors; King Arthur's banqueting chamber. To the scientist's
thought the oak is a vital mechanism. By day and by night, the long