There is a mother-idea in each particular kind of tree, which, if well marked, is probably embodied in the poetry of every language.  Take the oak, for instance, and we find it always standing as a type of strength and endurance.  I wonder if you ever thought of the single mark of supremacy which distinguishes this tree from all our other forest-trees?  All the rest of them shirk the work of resisting gravity; the oak alone defies it.  It chooses the horizontal direction for its limbs, so that their whole weight may tell,—­and then stretches them out fifty or sixty feet, so that the strain may be mighty enough to be worth resisting.  You will find, that, in passing from the extreme downward droop of the branches of the weeping-willow to the extreme upward inclination of those of the poplar, they sweep nearly half a circle.  At 90 degrees the oak stops short; to slant upward another degree would mark infirmity of purpose; to bend downwards, weakness of organization.  The American elm betrays something of both; yet sometimes, as we shall see, puts on a certain resemblance to its sturdier neighbor.

It won’t do to be exclusive in our taste about trees.  There is hardly one of them which has not peculiar beauties in some fitting place for it.  I remember a tall poplar of monumental proportions and aspect, a vast pillar of glossy green, placed on the summit of a lofty hill, and a beacon to all the country round.  A native of that region saw fit to build his house very near it, and, having a fancy that it might blow down some time or other, and exterminate himself and any incidental relatives who might be “stopping” or “tarrying” with him,—­also laboring under the delusion that human life is under all circumstances to be preferred to vegetable existence,—­had the great poplar cut down.  It is so easy to say, “It is only a poplar!” and so much harder to replace its living cone than to build a granite obelisk!

I must tell you about some of my tree-wives.  I was at one period of my life much devoted to the young lady-population of Rhode Island, a small, but delightful State in the neighborhood of Pawtucket.  The number of inhabitants being not very large, I had leisure, during my visits to the Providence Plantations, to inspect the face of the country in the intervals of more fascinating studies of physiognomy.  I heard some talk of a great elm a short distance from the locality just mentioned.  “Let us see the great elm,”—­I said, and proceeded to find it,—­knowing that it was on a certain farm in a place called Johnston, if I remember rightly.  I shall never forget my ride and my introduction to the great Johnston elm.