Undoubtedly you know how it feels to behold a cluster of young
birches bending gracefully over a sky-mirroring sheet of blue
water. Other trees are somberly beautiful like the pines, or
inspiringly majestic like the elms, both of which I love dearly.
But the sharply pointed cone of the pine suggests the earth on
which its broad base rests rather than the sky toward which
its top tends a little too urgently. And the elm represents
the material side of man in the utmost development attainable,
while the spirit still remains in comparative subordination. The
birch, on the other hand, is all spirit, it seems to me--but
without sacrifice of the indispensable material foundation.
Its subtly tapering lines send the eye irresistibly upward and
onward to the things that lie ahead and above--things which are
neither alien nor hostile to those of the present place and
moment, but which, instead, represent the ideal fulfilment of
the latter. The birch, therefore, approaches more closely than
anything else I can think of toward being a true symbol of life
at its best.--EDWIN BJORKMAN, _Collier’s Weekly_.
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