In one of the comers of the little garden that surrounded our house
there stood a cluster of trees, comprising a few evergreen oaks, two or
three lime trees, and seven or eight twisted elms, which were the
remains of a wood, planted centuries ago, and had, doubtless, been
respected as the _local Genius_ when the hill had been cleared, the
house built, and the garden first walled in. These lofty trees in
summer time served as a family saloon, in the open air. Their buds in
spring, their tints in autumn, and their dry leaves in winter, which
were succeeded by the hoar frost hanging from their branches like white
hair, had marked the seasons for us. Their shadows, rolled back upon
their very feet, or stretched out to the grassy border around, told us
the hours better than a dial. Beneath their foliage our mother had
nursed us, lulled us to rest, and taught us our first steps. My father
sat there, book in hand, when he returned from shooting; his shining
gun suspended from a branch, his panting dogs crouching beneath the
bench. I, too, had spent there the fairest hours of my boyhood, with
Homer or Telemachus lying open on the grass before me. I loved to lie
flat on the warm turf, my elbows resting on the volume, of which a
passing fly or lizard would sometimes hide the lines. The nightingales
among the branches sang for our home, though we could never find their
nest, or even see the branch from which their song burst forth. This
grove was the pride, the recollection, the love of all. The idea of
converting it into a small bag of money, which would leave no memory in
the heart, no perpetual joy and shade, would have occurred to no one,
save to a mother, trembling with anxiety for the life of an only son.
My mother conceived the thought; and, with the readiness and firmness
of resolve that distinguished her, called for the woodcutters as soon
as morning came,--fearing lest she should feel remorse, or my
entreaties stop her, if she first consulted me. She saw the axe laid to
their roots, and wept, and turned away her head not to hear their moan,
or witness the fall of these leafy protectors of her youth on the
echoing and desolate soil of the garden.