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.
I always tremble for a celebrated tree when I approach it for the
first time. Provincialism has no SCALE of excellence in man or
vegetable; it never knows a first-rate article of either kind when
it has it, and is constantly taking second and third rate ones for
Nature's best.
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