which I never come near without thinking of a friend of mine and of theirs who used to walk hereabouts with me; a real tree lover, who loves not species, not white oaks and red oaks, but individual trees, and goes to see them as one goes to see a man or a woman. This pair he always called the twins. They have summered and wintered each other for a hundred years. Who knows—putting the matter on grounds of pure science—whether they do not enjoy each other's companionship? Who knows that trees have no kind of sentience? Not I. We take a world of things for granted; and if all our neighbors chance to do the same, we let the general assumption pass for certainty. If trees do know anything, I would wager that it is something worth knowing, something quite as good as is to be found in any newspaper.
Here are red maples as bare as December, and yonder is one that is almost in full leaf; and by some freak of originality every leaf is bright yellow. Three days more and it will be naked also. Under it are white-alder bushes (Clethra) clothed in dark purple, and
