such wisdom, Daniel knew it would be easy to mix up the wicked elders
who plotted against the virtue of the fair Susanna by asking them a
question of botany. One said he saw her under a mastick tree and the
other under a holm tree. This gave Shakespeare that fine line in _The
Merchant of Venice_, "A Daniel come to judgment; yea, a Daniel." But
in these latter days we rarely read the story of Susanna, and
Shakespeare's line is not understood by one play-goer in fifty.

When the diminutive Zaccheus climbed into a shade tree which graced a
town lot in Jericho he gave the translators for "the Most High and
Mighty Prince James" another puzzle, for they put him on record as
going up into a sycamore tree. We had always supposed that this was
because the sycamore's habit of shedding its bark made smooth climbing
for Zaccheus. But scientific commentators tell us now that it was not
a sycamore tree, but a hybridized fig-mulberry!

* * * * *

But all this is digression. The best time to begin keeping that New
Year's nature resolution is now, when the oaks are seen in all their
rugged majesty, when the elms display their lofty, graceful, vase-like
forms, and when every other tree of the forest exhibits its peculiar
beauty of trunk, and branch, and twig. Often January is a most
propitious month for the tenderfoot nature-lover. Such was the year
which has just passed. During the first part of the month the weather
was almost springlike; so bright and balmy that a robin was seen in an
apple-tree, and the brilliant plumage of the cardinal was observed in
this latitude. Green leaves, such as wild geranium, strawberry and
speedwell, were to be found in abundance beneath their covering of
fallen forest leaves. Scouring rushes vied with evergreen ferns in