[Illustration: "GRATEFUL SHADE OF SOME FRIENDLY OLD OAK" (p. 63)]

[Illustration: "FAT FROM A SUMMER'S FEEDING" (p. 63)]

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Happy is the man who has made a companion of some fine old tree
standing near his home, type of the tree which he loved in his
boyhood, perchance the very same huge white oak. He learns to go to it
as he would to his friend, to let the old tree share his sorrows and
his joys. Others may be heedless of its charm, ignorant of its power
to help, but for him it always has a welcome and a ministry of beauty.
He learns to visit it often, to talk to it in his thoughts. Some
dreamy summer morning he muses on its history, its service to mankind.
The old tree seems to bend its branches down to listen as he says:

"I know you, old tree, and I love you. You belong to one of the first
and finest families. The remains of your ancestors have been found in
the eocene and miocene rocks, away, way north of your home at the
present time. They grew in beauty long before man's face was seen upon
the earth. The whole of civilization has rested beneath your ancestral
shade. Long before the Eternal City was founded your ancestors adorned
the seven hills and beautified the grass beneath with the flickering
shadows cast by their sunlit leaves. Some of them which gave shade to
the first habitations in the proud city that from her throne of
beauty ruled the world were still fine and flourishing centuries later
when Pliny sat beneath them in studious contemplation. Others of your
ancestors, old tree, formed the sacred grove of Dodona, where the
oracles spake to minds as yet in darkness. They were accounted fit to