A tree has a life void of trouble, he ruminated. The birds sing to it, and the wind caresses it, and it feels the sunshine, and greatens where it grows. Yes, I should like to be a tree indeed! "Shall I grant your wish?" asked the voice whisperingly--how exquisitely sweet and soothing it was!--"shall I grant it here, and now?" it asked. The student closed his eyes to leisurely consider; and then, half dreamily, answered, "Yes!" To be a tree is to be in touch with Nature nakedly; to be stripped of the disguises that have gathered about the man, and to be thrown back blankly into the narrowest groove of life. The student felt the wind and the sun on his branches, and the birds sang joyously, nestling among his leaves; his feet were rooted in the fresh and wholesome earth, and the sap moved sluggishly in his rough-barked trunk. It was a calm and deeply drowsy existence; but the restlessness of humanity was not yet eliminated from him, and he investigated his novel tenement wonderingly, and not without a touch of squeamish disgust. But when the quiet night descended on him, and the cooling dews slid into his pores, the exquisite soothe of the darkness enveloped him, and to the rustling of his leaves he fell healthily asleep. He was awakened presently by the gracious dawn, by the sweet and wholesome breath of morning, and the flash of the sunrise and the singing of birds. And had it not been for the dew-crumpled volume that now lay blotched and smirched at his feet, he would have forgotten his manhood and the unquiet life of cities and would have looked for his brothers only among the trees. But so long as the volume lay there forlornly, so long he remembered, and had something to regret. But the days passed--he could now keep no count of them--and human speech and human passions dropped away from his memory as quietly and painlessly as his own ripe leaves began presently to drop. And the tree's life narrowed to its narrow round of needs. It sheltered the birds, and it took the wind's kisses gladly, and it caught the snows in the wrinkles and twists of its boughs; and the squirrel nested in it, and the wood-mouse nibbled at it; and its life sufficed it, answering its desires. * * * * * One day there swept a mighty storm across the forest: the thunder crashed and the lightning flashed continuously; and the whole land held its breath, listening to the uproar. The Lord of the Forest was moving among his children: and some of them he passed without injuring or despoiling them; but others he smote wrathfully, so that he rent them and they died. And when he came to the tree that had one-time been the student, he remembered, and desired to bestow on it a boon. And he said to the elm, now gnarled and wrinkled, "You shall be a man again, if you earnestly desire it--a man again until you die."