If tree-worship was ever the religion of any tribe, I know that I
am ancestrally bound to that folk. Once an artist told me of his
happy method of protecting his wife, children, and friends from the
outbursts incidental to genius. He would go to the woods and beat a
tree until his symptomatic rage was exhausted. As if a tree-beater and
a wife-beater were not cousins german in crime! And now I was going to
steep my soul more heinously. The oak boards of my cabin roof had to
be reinforced. I could not spend another winter with the snows driving
in on me. A “board-tree” had to be felled before the sap was up; and
on one of those days which are claimed by both spring and winter, but
belong to neither, I set out with granpap, the most skilful board-maker
in the Unakas, to select a victim.
“Now this white oak,” said granpap, pausing by a giant that gazed
reflectively over the valley, “will make as good boards as you’d want
to sleep under.”
“But, granpap, don’t you see--we are interrupting him.”
His eyes narrowed in the suspicious way of our first acquaintance.
“I mean he is sort of on duty here, as if the spirit of the woods
needed a sentry just at this place.”
His glance became a cold squint, and I plunged for a practical argument.
“White oaks make good mast. We must think of the hogs. There’ll be
three new litters to feed next winter.”
“I reckon you’re right,” he said, instantly at home. “And yander at the
head of Flume Cove is a black oak that will make tollable boards if it
don’t do better.”
“A black oak? With all that green moss on it? And look at the first
branch. It has an elbow crooked round a bellwood. Would you divorce
such a pair? What God hath joined, granpap.”
“Well, it wouldn’t make prize boards anyhow,” he said, moving on
unregretfully.
Suddenly a fear gripped me. We were nearing a glen at whose door stood
a tree which for me symbolized the perfect life. I had often wondered
why no human being could achieve maturity so unblemished, and I never
passed it without a wave of happy solemnity rolling over me. I began to
talk about bee-trees, the only subject on which granpap was excitable.
Thickly, hurriedly, I developed a rapacious interest in the wild bee
and its hidden ways. And at the precise moment when we passed the pride
of my woods, granpap was singsonging the lines which an old, old man
had taught his grandfather when a boy:
“A swarm in May,
Count a dollar a day;
A swarm in June,
A silver spoon;
A swarm in July,
Not worth a house-fly.”
I had lured him safely by, and we neared the road again. His eye was on
a tree with a long, perfect trunk, but which slanted from the root up,
leaning over the road.
“I might do with that,” said he. “It’s dangerous thar anyway.”
“Dangerous! Don’t you see how strong it is, and how gently it leans
over the road, like a great arm of blessing? I’m so used to that tree I
should feel sure of accident overtaking me before I reached the village
if I didn’t pass under it.”
Granpap halted. “I ain’t got time to waste corkusin’ around like this.
I’ll go to the new ground and do some grubbin’. Then to-morr’ I’ll git
up early and find a tree.”