Faces in the Fire Part 9

Jack managed to get his little tin soldiers into a tiny two-inch trench; but, as a matter of serious fact, those diminutive warriors have occupied a really great place in the story of this little world. Bagehot somewhere draws a pathetic picture of crowds of potential authors who, having the time, the desire, and the ability to write, are yet unable for the life of them to think of anything to write about. Let one of these unfortunates bend his unconsecrated energies to the writing of a book on the influence of toys in the making of men. Only the other day an antiquarian, digging away in the neighbourhood of the Pyramids, came upon an old toy-chest. Here were dolls, and soldiers, and wooden animals, and, indeed, all the playthings that make up the stock-in-trade of a modern nursery. It is pleasant to think of those small Egyptians in the days of the Pharaohs amusing themselves with the selfsame toys that beguiled our own childhood. It is pleasant to think of the place of the toy-chest in the history of the world from that remote time down to our own.

But I must not be deflected into a discussion of the whole tremendous subject of toys. I must stick to these little tin soldiers. And these small metallic warriors cut a really brave figure in our history. Some of the happiest days in Robert Louis Stevenson's happy life were the days that he spent as a boy in his grandfather's manse at Colinton.

'That was my golden age!' he used to say. He never forgot the rickety old phaeton that drove into Edinburgh to fetch him; the lovely scenery on either side of the winding country road; or the excited welcome that always awaited him when he drove up to the manse door. But most vividly of all he remembered the box of tin soldiers; the marshalling of huge armies on the great mahogany table; the play of strategy; the furious combat; and the final glorious victory. The old gentleman sat back in his s.p.a.cious arm-chair, cracking his nuts and sipping his wine, whilst his imaginative little grandson in his velvet suit controlled the movements of armies and the fates of empires. The love of those little tin soldiers never forsook him. Later on, at Davos, an exile from home, fighting bravely against that terrible malady that had marked him as its prey, it was to the little tin soldiers that he turned for comfort. 'The tin soldiers most took his fancy,' says Mr. Lloyd Osbourne, 'and the war game was constantly improved and elaborated, until, from a few hours, a war took weeks to play, and the critical operations in the attic monopolized half our thoughts. On the floor a map was roughly drawn in chalks of different colours, with mountains, rivers, towns, bridges, and roads in two colours. The mimic battalions marched and countermarched, changed by measured evolutions from column formation into line, with cavalry screens in front and ma.s.sed supports behind in the most approved military fas.h.i.+on of to-day. It was war in miniature, even to the making and destruction of bridges; the entrenching of camps; good and bad weather, with corresponding influence on the roads; siege and horse artillery, proportionately slow, as compared with the speed of unimpeded foot, and proportionately expensive in the upkeep; and an exacting commissariat added the last touch of verisimilitude.' Those little tin soldiers marched up and down the whole of Robert Louis Stevenson's life.

They were with him in boyhood at Colinton; they were with him in maturity at Davos; and they were in at the death. For, in the familiar house at Vailima, the house on the top of the hill, the house from which his gentle spirit pa.s.sed away, there was one room dedicated to the little tin soldiers. The great coloured map monopolized the floor, and the tiny regiments marched or halted at their frail commander's will.

One could multiply examples almost endlessly. We need not have followed Robert Louis Stevenson half-way round the world. We might have visited Ireland and seen Mr. Parnell's box of toys. Everybody knows the story of his victory over his sister. f.a.n.n.y commanded one division of tin soldiers on the nursery floor; Charles led the opposing force. Each general was possessed of a popgun, and swept the serried lines of the enemy with this terrible weapon. For several days the war continued without apparent advantage being gained by either side. But one day everything was changed. Strange as it may seem, f.a.n.n.y's soldiers fell by the score and by the hundred, while those commanded by her brother refused to waver even when palpably hit. This went on until f.a.n.n.y's army was utterly annihilated. But Charles confessed, an hour later, that, before opening fire that morning, he had taken the precaution to glue the feet of his soldiers to the nursery floor! Did somebody discover in those war games at Colinton, Davos, and Vailima a reflection, as in a mirror, of the adventurous spirit of Robert Louis Stevenson? Or, even more clearly, did somebody see, in that famous fight on the nursery floor at Avondale, a forecast of the great Irish leader's pa.s.sionate fondness for outwitting his antagonists and overwhelming his bewildered foe?

Then let us glance at one other picture, and we shall see what we shall see! We are in Russia now. It is at the close of the seventeenth century. Yonder is a boy of whom the world will one day talk till its tongue is tired. They will call him Peter the Great. See, he gathers together all the boys of the neighbourhood and plays with them.

Plays--but at what? 'He plays soldiers, of course,' says Waliszewski, 'and, naturally, he was in command. Behold him, then, at the head of a regiment! Out of this childish play rose that mighty creation, the Russian army. Yes,' our Russian author goes on to exclaim, 'yes, this double point of departure--the pseudo-naval games on the lake of Pereislavl, and the pseudo-military games on the Preobrajenskoie drill-ground--led to the double goal--the Conquest of the Baltic and the Battle of Poltava!' Yes, to these, and to how much else? When Jack cures his toothache with a box of soldiers, who knows what world-shaking evolutions are afoot?

And now the time has come to make a serious investigation. Why is Jack--taking Jack now as the federal head and natural representative of Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles Stewart Parnell, Peter the Great, and all the boys who ever were, are, or will be--why is Jack so inordinately fond of a box of soldiers? By what magic have those tiny tin campaigners the power to exorcise the agonies of toothache? Now look; the answer is simple, and it is twofold. The small metallic warriors appeal to the innate love of _Conquest_ and to the innate love of _Command_. And in that innate love of Conquest is summed up all Jack's future relations.h.i.+p to his foes. And in that innate love of Command is summed up all his future relations.h.i.+p to his friends. For long, long ago, in the babyhood of the world, G.o.d spoke to man for the first time. And in that very first sentence, G.o.d said, 'Subdue the earth and have dominion!'

'Subdue!'--that is Conquest; 'have dominion!'--that is Command. And since the first man heard those martial words, 'Subdue and have dominion!' the pa.s.sions of the conqueror and the commander have tingled in the blood of the race. They have been awakened in Jack by the box of soldiers. He feels that he is born to fight, born to struggle, born to overcome, born to triumph, born to command. And that fighting instinct will never really desert him. It will follow him, as it followed Stevenson, from infancy to death. He may put it to evil uses. He may fight the wrong people, or fight the wrong things. But that only shows how vital a business is his training. A naval officer has to spend half his time familiarizing himself with the appearance of all our British battles.h.i.+ps, in all lights and at all angles, so that he may never be misled, amidst the confusion of battle, into opening fire upon his comrades. As Jack looks up to us from his little two-inch trenches, his innocent eyes seem to appeal eloquently for similar tuition.

'Teach me what those forces are that I have to _conquer_,' he seems to say, 'then teach me what forces I have to _command_, and I will spend all my days in the Holy War.'

And, depend upon it, if we can show Jack how to bend to his will all the mysterious forces at his disposal, and to recognize at a glance all the alien forces that are ranged against him, we shall see him one day among the conquerors who, with songs of victory on their lips and with palms in their hands, share the rapture of the world's last triumph.

II

LOVE, MUSIC, AND SALAD

It seems an odd mixture at first glance; but it isn't mine. Mr. Wilkie Collins is responsible for the amazing hotch-potch. 'What do you say,'

he asks in _The Moonstone_, 'what do you say when our county member, growing hot, at cheese and salad time, about the spread of democracy in England, burst out as follows: "If we once lose our ancient safeguards, Mr. Blake, I beg to ask you, what have we got left?" And what do you say to Mr. Franklin answering, from the Italian point of view, "_We have got three things left, sir--Love, Music, and Salad_"'? I confess that, when first I came upon this curious conglomeration, I thought that Mr.

Franklin meant Love, Music, and Salad to stand for a mere incomprehensible confusion, a meaningless jumble. I examined the sentence a second time, however, and began to suspect that there was at least some method in his madness. And now that I scrutinize it still more closely, I feel ashamed of my first hasty judgement. I can see that Love, Music, and Salad are the fundamental elements of the solar system; and, as Mr. Franklin suggests, so long as they are left to us we can afford to smile at any political convulsions that may chance to overtake us.

Love, Music, and Salad are the three biggest things in life. Mr.

Franklin has not only outlined the situation with extraordinary precision, but he has placed these three basic factors in their exact scientific order. Love comes first. Indeed, we only come because Love calls for us. We find it waiting with outstretched arms on arrival. It smothers our babyhood with kisses, and hedges our infancy about with its ceaseless ministry of doting affection. Love is the beginning of everything; I need not labour that point. Where there is no love there is neither music nor salad, nor anything else worth writing about.

Mr. Franklin was indisputably right in putting Love first, and immediately adding Music. You cannot imagine Love without Music. I am hoping that one of these days one of our philosophers will give us a book on the language that does not need learning. There is room for a really fine volume on that captivating theme. Henry Drummond has a most fascinating and characteristic essay on _The Evolution of Language_; but from my present standpoint it is sadly disappointing. From first to last Drummond works on the a.s.sumption that human language is a thing of imitation and acquisition. The foundation of it all, he tells us, is in the forest. Man heard the howl of the dog, the neigh of the horse, the bleat of the lamb, the stamp of the goat; and he deliberately copied these sounds. He noticed, too, that each animal has sounds specially adapted for particular occasions. One monkey, we are told, utters at least six different sounds to express its feelings; and Darwin discovered four or five modulations in the bark of the dog. 'There is the bark of eagerness, as in the chase; that of anger, as well as growling; the yelp or howl of despair, as when shut up; the baying at night; the bark of joy, as when starting on a walk with his master; and the very distinct one of demand or supplication, as when wis.h.i.+ng for a door or window to be opened.' Drummond appears to a.s.sume that primitive man listened to these sounds and copied them, much as a child speaks of the bow-wow, the moo-moo, the quack-quack, the tick-tick, and the puff-puff. But in all this we leave out of our reckoning one vital factor. The most expressive language that we ever speak is the language that we never learned. As Darwin himself points out, there are certain simple and vivid feelings which we express, and express with the utmost clearness, but without any kind of reference to our higher intelligence.

'Our cries of pain, fear, surprise, anger, together with their appropriate actions, and the murmur of a mother to her beloved child, are more expressive than any words.'

Is not this a confession of the fact that the soul, in its greatest moments, speaks a language, not of imitation or of acquisition, but one that it brought with it, a language of its own? The language that we learn varies according to nationality. The speech of a Chinaman is an incomprehensible jargon to a Briton; the utterance of a Frenchman is a mere riot of sound to a Hindu. The language that we learn is affected even by dialects, so that a man in one English county finds it by no means easy to interpret the speech of a visitor from another. It is even affected by rank and position; the speech of the plough-boy is one thing, the speech of the courtier is quite another. So confusing is the language that we learn! But let a man speak in the language that needs no learning; and all the world will understand him. The cry of a child in pain is the same in Iceland as in India, in Hobart as in Timbuctoo!

The soft and wordless crooning of a mother as she lulls her babe to rest; the scream of a man in mortal anguish; the sudden outburst of uncontrollable laughter; the sigh of regret; the t.i.tter of amus.e.m.e.nt; and the piteous cry of a broken heart,--these know neither nationality nor rank nor station. They are the same in castle as in cottage; in Tasmania as in Thibet; in the world's first morning as in the world's last night. The most expressive language, the only language in which the soul itself ever really speaks, is a language without alphabet or grammar. It needs neither to be learned nor taught, for all men speak it, and all men understand.

Was that, consciously or subconsciously, at the back of Mr. Franklin's mind when he put Music next to Love? Certain it is that, in that unwritten language which is greater than all speech, Music is the natural expression of Love. Why is there music in the grove and the forest? It is because love is there. The birds never sing so sweetly as during the mating season. For awhile the male bird hovers about the person of his desired bride, and pours out an incessant torrent of song in the fond hope of one day winning her; and when his purpose is achieved, he goes on singing for very joy that she is his. And afterwards he 'gallantly perches near the little home, pouring forth his joy and pride, sweetly singing to his mate as she sits within the nest, patiently hatching her brood.' Both in men and women it is at the approach of the love-making age that the voice suddenly develops, and it is when the deepest chords in the soul are first struck that the richest and fullest notes can be sung.

Music, then, is the natural concomitant of Love. That is why most of our songs are love-songs. If a man is in love he can no more help singing than a bird can help flying. You cannot love anything without singing about it. Men love G.o.d; that is why we have hymn-books. Men love women; that is why we have ballads. Men love their country; that is why we have national anthems and patriotic airs.

But the stroke of genius in Mr. Franklin lay in the addition of the Salad. If he had contented himself with Love and Music, he would have uttered a truth, and a great truth; but it would have been a commonplace truth. As it is, he lifts the whole thing into the realm of brilliance--and reality. For, after all, of what earthly use are Love and Music unless they lead to Salad? When to Love and Music Mr. Franklin shrewdly added Salad, he put himself in line with the greatest philosophers of all time. Bishop Butler told us years ago that if we allow emotions which are designed to lead to action to become excited, and no action follows, the very excitation of that emotion without its appropriate response leaves the heart much harder than it was before.

And, more recently, our brilliant Harvard Professor, Dr. William James, has warned us that it is a very damaging thing for the mind to receive an _impression_ without giving that impression an adequate and commensurate _expression_. If you go to a concert, he says, and hear a lovely song that deeply moves you, you ought to pay some poor person's tram fare on the way home. It is a natural as well as a psychological law. The earth, for example, receives the impression represented by the fall of autumn leaves, the descent of sap from the bough, and the widespread decay of wintry desolation. But she hastens to give expression to this impression by all the wealth and plenitude of her glorious spring array.

The New Testament gives us a great story which exactly ill.u.s.trates my point. It is a very graceful and tender record, full of Love and Music, but containing also something more than Love and Music. For when Dorcas died all the widows stood weeping in the chamber of death, showing the coats that Dorcas had made while she was yet with them. Dorcas was a Jewess. At one time she had been taught to regard the name of Jesus as a thing to be abhorred and accursed. But later on a wonderful experience befell her. Could she ever forget the day on which, amidst a whirl of spiritual bewilderment and a tempest of spiritual emotion, she had discovered, in the very Messiah whom once she had despised, her Saviour and her Lord? It was a day never to be forgotten, a day full of Love and Music. How could she produce an expression adequate to that wonderful impression? Not in words; for she was not gifted with speech. Yet an expression must be found. It would have been a fatal thing for the delicate soul of Dorcas if so turgid a flood of feeling had found no apt and natural outlet. And in that crisis she thought of her needle. She expressed her love for the Lord in the occupation most familiar to her.

It was a kind of storage of energy. Dorcas wove her love for her Lord into every st.i.tch, and a tender thought into every st.i.tch, and a fervent prayer into every st.i.tch. And that spiritual storage escaped through warm coats and neat garments into the hearts and homes of these widows and poor folk along the coast, and they learned the depth and tenderness of the divine love from the deft finger-tips of Dorcas.

Salad is the natural and fitting outcome of Love and Music. I have already confessed that when first I came upon the triune conjunction I thought it rather an incongruous medley, a strange hotch-potch, an ill-a.s.sorted company. That is the worst of judging things in a hurry.

The eye does the work of the brain, and does it badly. It is a common failing of ours. Look at the torrent of toothless jokes that have been directed at the contrast between the romance of courts.h.i.+p and the domestic realities that follow. The former, according to the traditional estimate, consists of billing and cooing, of fervent protestations and radiant dreams, of romantic loveliness and honeyed phrases. The latter, according to the same traditional view, consists of struggle and anxiety, of drudgery and menial toil, of broken nights with tiresome children, of nerve-racking anxiety and an endless sequence of troubles.

He who looks at life in this way makes precisely the same mistake that I myself made when I first saw Mr. Franklin's Love, Music, and Salad, and thought it a higgledy-piggledy hotch-potch. It is nothing of the kind.

Love naturally leads to Music; and Love and Music naturally lead to Salad. Courts.h.i.+p leads to the cradle and the kitchen, it is true; but both cradle and kitchen are glorified and consecrated by the courts.h.i.+p that has gone before. Our English homes, take them for all in all, are the loveliest things in the world.

The merry homes of England!

Around their hearths by night, What gladsome looks of household love Meet in the ruddy light!

There woman's voice flows forth in song, Or childhood's tale is told; Or lips move tunefully along Some glorious page of old.

Here is a picture of Love, Music, and Salad in perfect combination. And what a secret lies behind it! The fact is that the heathen world has nothing at all corresponding to our English sweethearting. Men and women are thrown into each other's arms by barter, by compact, by conquest, and in a thousand ways. In one land a man buys his bride; in another he fights as the brutes do for the mate of his fancy; in yet another he takes her without seeing her, it was so ordained. Only in a land that has felt the spell of the influence of Jesus would sweethearting, as we know it, be possible. The pure and charming freedom of social intercourse; the liberty to yield to the mystic magnetism that draws the one to the other, and the other to the one; the coy approach; the shy exchanges; the arm-in-arm walks, and the heart-to-heart talks; the growing admiration; the deepening pa.s.sion; culminating at last in the fond formality of the engagement and the rapture of ultimate union; in what land, unsweetened by the power of the gospel, would such a procedure be possible? And the consequence is that our homes stand in such striking contrast to the homes of heathen peoples. 'There are no homes in Asia!' Mr. W. H. Seward, the American statesman, exclaimed sadly, fifty years ago. It is scarcely true now, for Christ is gaining on Asia every day; and the missionaries confess that the greatest propagating power that the gospel possesses is the gracious though silent witness of the Christian homes. Human life is robbed of all animalism and baseness when true love enters. And there is no true love apart from the highest love of all.

Salad may seem a prosaic thing to follow on the heels of Love and Music; but the salad that has been prepared by fingers that one thinks it heaven to kiss is tinged and tinctured with the flavour of romance. All through life, Love makes life's Music. All through life, Love and Music lead to Salad. And, all through life, Love and Music glorify the Salad to which they lead. They trans.m.u.te it by this magic into such a dish as many a king has sighed for all his days, but sighed in vain.

III

THE FELLING OF THE TREE

I was strolling with some friends up a lovely avenue in the bush this afternoon, when a quite unexpected experience befell us. On either side of the narrow track the tall trees jostled each other at such close quarters that, when we looked up, only a ribbon of sky could be seen above our heads. The tree-tops almost arched over us. Straight before us was a hill surmounted by a number of gigantic blue-gums, only one or two of which were visible in the limited section of the landscape which the foliage about us permitted us to survey. As we sauntered leisurely along the leafy path, thinking of anything but the objects immediately surrounding us, we were suddenly startled by a loud and ominous creaking and straining. Looking hastily up, we saw one of the giant trees falling, and describing in its fall an enormous arc against the clear sky ahead of us. What a crash as the toppling monster strikes the tree-tops among which it falls! What a thud as the huge thing hits the ground! What a roar as it rolls over the hill, bearing down all lesser growths before it! Our first impression was that the tree had been reduced by natural forces; but we soon discovered that it had been deliberately destroyed! The men were already at work upon a second magnificent fellow; and we waited until he too was prostrate.

Nothing in the solar system suggests such a mixture of emotion as the felling of a great tree. In a way, it is pleasant and exhilarating, or why was Mr. Gladstone so fond of the exercise? And why were we so eager to stay until the second tree was down? Richard Jefferies, who hated to destroy things, and often could not bring himself to pull the trigger of his gun, nevertheless felt the fascination of the axe. 'Much as I admired the timber about the Chace,' he says, 'I could not help sometimes wis.h.i.+ng to have a chop at it. The pleasure of felling trees is never lost. In youth, in manhood, so long as the arm can wield the axe, the enjoyment is equally keen. As the heavy tool pa.s.ses over the shoulder, the impetus of the swinging motion lightens the weight, and something like a thrill pa.s.ses through the sinews. Why is it so pleasant to strike? What secret instinct is it that makes the delivery of a blow with axe or hammer so exhilarating?' What indeed! For certainly a wild delight makes the heart beat faster, and sends the blood bounding through the veins, as one sees the axes flash, the chips fly, the gash grow deeper, and notices at last the first slow movement of the glorious tree.

And yet I confess that, mixed with this pungent sense of pleasure, there was a still deeper emotion. The thing seems so irreparable. It is easy enough to destroy these monarchs of the bush, but who can restore them to their former grandeur? It must have been this sense of sadness that led Beaconsfield--Gladstone's famous protagonist--to ordain in his will that none of his beloved trees at Hughenden should ever be cut down. How long had these trees stood here, these two giants that had been in a few moments reduced to humiliating horizontality? I cannot tell. They must have been here when all these hills and valleys were peopled only by the aboriginals. They saw the black man prowl about the bush. From the hill here, overlooking the bay, they must have seen Captain Cook's s.h.i.+ps cast anchor down the stream. They watched the coming of the white men; they saw the convict s.h.i.+ps arrive with their dismal freight of human wretchedness; they witnessed the swift and tragic extermination of the native race; they beheld a nation spring into being at their feet! Did the great trees know that, as the white men exterminated the black men, so the white men would exterminate _them_? Did they feel that the coming of those strange vessels up the bay sealed their own doom? Before the new-comers could build their homes, or lay out their farms, or plant their orchards, they must make war on the trees with fire and axe. Homes and nations can only be built by sacrifice, and the trees are the innocent victims.

I suppose that the sadness arises partly from the fact that the forest is Man's oldest and most faithful friend, and one towards whom he is inclined to turn with ever-increasing reverence and affection as the years go by. With the advance of the years we all turn wistfully back to the things that charmed our infancy, and the race obeys that selfsame primal law. Almost every nation on the face of the earth traces its history back to the forest primaeval. From the forest we sprang; and by the forest we were originally sustained. And even when at length the primitive race issued from those leafy recesses and devoted itself to agriculture and to commerce, men still regarded their ancient fastnesses as the storehouse from which they drew everything that was essential to their progress and development. Man found the forest his warehouse, his factory, his armoury, his all. With logs that he felled in the bush he built his first primitive home; out of branches that he tore from the trees he fas.h.i.+oned his first implements and tools; and when the tranquillity that brooded over his pastoral simplicity was broken by the shout of discord and the noise of tumult, it was to those selfsame woods that he rushed for his first crude weapons of defence.

Architecture, agriculture, invention, and military ingenuity have each of them made enormous strides since then; but it was in the bush that each of these potent makers of our destiny was born. And did not John Smeaton confess that he borrowed from the graceful curve of the oak as it rises from the ground the main idea that characterized the construction of the Eddystone lighthouse? Whenever the architect, the farmer, the inventor, or the soldier desires to visit the scenes amidst which his craft spent its earliest infancy, it will be to the forest primaeval that he will turn his steps. Of medicine, too, the same may be said; for, in those long and leisured days of sylvan quiet, men learned the secrets of the bark and discovered the healing virtues that slept in the swaying leaves; and straightway the forest became a pharmacy. When, exhausted by his labour, or enervated by unaccustomed conditions, his health failed him, Man resorted for his first drugs and tonics to his ancient home among the trees. Indeed, he still returns to the forest to be nursed and tended in his hour of sickness.

Those who have read Gene Stratton Porter's _Harvester_ know what wonders lurk in the woods. The Harvester lived away in the forest, and from bark and gum and sap and leaf he collected the tonics and anodynes and stimulants that he sold to the chemists in the great cities. And after awhile every tree that he felled seemed to him such a wealthy store of healing virtue that, when he began to think of his dream-girl and his future home, he could scarcely bring himself to build his cabin out of logs that were so overflowing with medicinal properties. He was in love, and all the tumultuous emotions awakened by that great experience were surging through his veins; and yet it seemed to him an act of sacrilege to cut chairs and tables out of such sacred things as trees! He apologetically explained the delicacy of the situation to each oak and ash before lifting his axe against it.

'You know how I hate to kill you!' he said to the first one he felled.

'But it must be legitimate, you know, for a man to take enough trees to build a home. And no other house is possible for a creature of the woods but a cabin, is it? The birds use the material they find here; and surely I have a right to do the same. Nothing else would serve, at least for me. I was born and reared here, and I've always loved you!'

But for all that, he felt, as the fragrant chips flew in all directions, just as a man might feel who killed a pet lamb for the table; and the Harvester could scarcely reconcile himself to his iconoclastic work. In Medicine Woods he had learned the awful sanct.i.ty of the forest, the forest that was the home and nurse and mother of us all, and it seemed to him a dreadful thing to slay a tree. Frazer tells us in his _Golden Bough_ that the Ojibwa Indians very rarely cut down green or living trees; they fancy that it puts the poor things to such pain. And some of their medicine men aver that, with their mysterious powers of hearing, they have heard the wailing and the screaming of the trees beneath the axe. Mr. Adams, too, in his _Israel's Ideal_, has reminded us that, in Eastern Africa, the destruction of the cocoanut-tree is regarded as a form of matricide, since that tree gives men life and nourishment as a mother does her child. The early Greek philosophers, Aristotle and Plutarch, watching the rustling of the leaves and the swaying of the graceful branches, came to the conclusion that trees are sentient things possessed of living souls. And, in his _Tales for Children_, Tolstoy makes as pathetic a scene out of the death of a great tree as many a novelist makes out of the death of a gallant hero.

Now it must have been out of this strange feeling--this dim consciousness of a sacredness that haunted the leafy solitudes--that Man came to regard the forest with superst.i.tious grat.i.tude and veneration.

The bush represented to him the source of all his supplies, the reservoir that met all his demands, the means of all healing, and the very fountain of life. And so he plunged into the depths of the forest and erected his temples there; in its shady groves he reared his solemn altars; in its leafy glades he built his shrines; and the imagery of the forest wove itself into the vocabulary of his devotion. The representation of a sacred tree occurs repeatedly, carved upon the stony ruins of Egyptian, a.s.syrian, and Phoenician temples, and Herodotus more than once remarks upon the frequency of tree-wors.h.i.+p among the ancient peoples. Pliny, too, marvelled at the reverence which the Druids felt for the oak, and, in a scarcely less degree, for the holly, the ash, and the birch. And what stirring pa.s.sages those are in which George Borrow describes the weird rites and dark symbolism of the gipsies as they wors.h.i.+pped at dead of night in the fearsome recesses of the pine forests of Spain!

It is really not surprising that this haunting sense of sanct.i.ty in the woods should lead Man to wors.h.i.+p there. Even Emerson felt that--

The G.o.ds talk in the breath of the woods, They talk in the shaken pine.

And the Harvester himself found the forest to be instinct with moral and spiritual potencies. 'You not only discover miracles and marvels in the woods,' he said, 'but you get the greatest lessons taught in all the world ground into you early and alone--courage, caution, and patience.'

Here, then, we have the trees as teachers and preachers, and many a man has learned the deepest lessons of his life at the feet of these shrewd and silent philosophers. What about Brother Lawrence, whose _Practice of the Presence of G.o.d_ has become one of the Church's cla.s.sics? 'The first time I saw Brother Lawrence,' writes his friend, 'was upon August 3, 1666. He told me that G.o.d had done him a singular favour in his conversion at the age of eighteen. It happened in this way. One winter morning, seeing a tree stripped of its leaves, and considering that within a little time the leaves would be renewed, and that after that the flowers and fruit would appear, he received a high view of the providence and power of G.o.d, which has never since been effaced from his soul.' What G.o.d could do for the leafless tree, he thought, He could also do for him.

Milton tells us that the forest, which has played so large a part in the development of this world, will flourish also in the next.

In heaven the trees Of life ambrosial fruitage bear, and vines Yield nectar.