Thoughts of this kind came to me the other afternoon, as I stood in the path (what is known as the town path cuts the lot in two) and looked about. So much was going on in this bit of earth, itself the very centre of the universe to multitudes of living things. The city out of which I had come was not more densely populous. Here at my elbow stood a group of sassafras saplings, remnants of a race that has held the ground for nobody knows how long. One of my earliest recollections of the place is of coming hither to dig for fragrant roots. At that time it had never dawned upon me that the owner of the land would some day die, and leave it to me, his heir. How hard and rocky the ground was! And how hard we worked for a very little bark! Yet few of my pleasures have lasted better. The spicy taste is in my mouth still. Even in those days I remarked the glossy green twigs of this elegant species, as well as the unique and beautiful variety of its leaves,--some entire and oval, others mitten-shaped, and others yet three-lobed; an extremely pretty bit of originality, suiting admirably with the general comely habit of this tree. There are some trees, as some men, that seem born to dress well. Along with the sassafras I was delighted to find one or two small specimens of the flowering dogwood (_Cornus florida_),--another original genius, and one which I now for the first time became acquainted with as a tenant of my own. Its deeply veined leaves are not in any way remarkable (unless it be for their varied autumnal tints), and are all fashioned after one pattern. Its blossoms, too, are small and inconspicuous; but these it sets round with large white bracts (universally mistaken for petals by the uninitiated), and in flowering time it is beyond comparison the showiest tree in the woods, while its fruit is the brightest of coral red. I hope these saplings of mine may hold their own in the struggle for life, and be flourishing in all their beauty when my successor goes to look at them fifty years hence. Having spoken of the originality of the sassafras and the dogwood, I must not fail to mention their more abundant neighbor, the witch-hazel, or hamamelis. In comparison with its wild freak of singularity, the modest idiosyncrasies of the other two seem almost conventional. Why, if not for sheer oddity's sake, should any bush in this latitude hold back its blossoms till near the edge of winter? As I looked at the half-grown buds, clustered in the axils of the yellow leaves, they appeared to be waiting for the latter to fall, that they might have the sunlight all to themselves. They will need it, one would say, in our bleak November weather.