'T will be encircled and embraced within my deepest soul.






THE OLD TREE AND ITS LESSON.





THERE is a story about that old tree; a biography of that old
gnarled trunk and those broad-spread branches.

Listen.

Many, very many years ago,--there were forests then where now are
cities, and the Indian song was borne on that breeze which now bears
the sound of the Sabbath bell, and where the fire of the work-shop
sends up its dense, black smoke, the white cloud from the Indian's
wigwam arose,--yes, 't was many years ago, when, by the door of a
rough, rude, but serviceable dwelling, a little boy sat on an old
man's knee. He was a bright youth, with soft blue eyes, from which
his soul looked out and smiled, and hair so beautiful that it seemed
to be a dancing sunbeam rather than what it really was.

The old man had been telling him of the past; had been telling him
that when he was a child he loved the forest, and the rock, and the