"Of course--that's what I mean," said Stoopy. "Nobody can do a thing he can't do; and if you find that you can't do it, don't do it; you'll get the apple just the same, only you won't have earned it, and it may not seem so good, particularly the core. I suppose you know that to-morrow is Decoration Day?" "Yes, indeed," said Jimmieboy. "Mamma's going to send a lot of flowers to the Committee, and papa's going to take me to see the soldiers, and after that I'm going over to the semingary to see them decorate the graves." "That's what I thought," said the tree, with a sigh. "I wish I could go. There's nothing I'd like to do better than to go over there and drop a lot of blossoms around on the graves of the men who went to war and lost their lives so that you might have a country, and we trees could grow in peace without being afraid of having a cannon-ball shot into us, cutting us in two--but I want to tell you a little story about all that. You didn't know I was planted by a little boy who went to the war and got killed, did you?" "No," returned Jimmieboy, softly. "I didn't know that. I asked papa one day who planted you, and he said he guessed you just grew." "Well, that's true, I did just grow," said Stoopy, "but I had to be planted first, and I was planted right here by a little boy only ten years old. He was awfully good to me, too. He used to take care of me just as if I were a little baby. I wasn't more than half as tall as he was when he set me out here, and I was his tree, and he was proud as could be to feel that he owned me; and he used to tell me that when I grew big and had apples he was going to sell the apples and buy nice things for his mother with the money he got for 'em. We grew up together. He took such good care of me that I soon got to be taller than he was, and the taller I became the prouder he was of me. Oh, he was a fine boy, Jimmieboy, and as he grew up his mother and father were awfully proud of him. And then the war broke out. He was a little over twenty years old then, and he couldn't be kept from going to fight. He joined the regiment that was raised here, and after a little while he said good-by to his mother and father, and then he came out here to me and put his arms around my trunk and kissed me good-by too, and he plucked a little sprig of leaves from one of my branches and put it in his buttonhole, and then he went away. That was the last time I saw him. He was killed in his first battle." Here Stoopy paused for an instant, and trembled a little, and a few blossoms fell like trickling tear-drops, and fluttered softly to the ground.